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LIGHT AKISING
"Visit then this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief;
Fill me, Radiancy Divine,
Scatter all mine unbelief;
More and more Thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day."
LIGHT ARISING
THOUGHTS
ON THE CENTRAL RADIANCE
CAROLINE EMELIA STEPHEN
AUTHOR OF "QUAKER STRONGHOLDS"
CAMBRIDGE
W. HEFFER & SONS
LONDON :
HEADLEY BBOS., BISHOPSGATE ST., E.C.
SIMPKIN, MABSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co., Ltd.
1908
PREFACE
rflHE following papers have been written on
-*- various occasions and at considerable intervals
of time. Some amount of repetition will be found
in them owing to the fact that the point of view
they represent — that of Rational Mysticism — is not
so often distinctly recognised as it is unconsciously
occupied. Its full acceptance involves I believe a
certain habitual method of regarding the relation
between the inner and outer regions of experience.
And in order to make the drift of some of these
papers clear to hearers unfamiliar with that method,
it seemed on several occasions necessary to state it
afresh.
To re- write the whole series with a view to getting
rid of these repetitions would be not only laborious
but dangerous, as suggesting an attempt at something
more systematic and adequate than I could achieve.
I have therefore thought it best to leave the papers
vi Preface
almost untouched ; trusting to the kindly indulgence
of my readers in judging of reflections so scattered
and so essentially fugitive in form, though all springing
from a common foundation of unaltering conviction.
For a fuller and more deliberate statement of my
belief regarding the Inner Light and Divine Guidance,
I must refer to Chap. II of Quaker Strongholds1.
I must acknowledge with thanks the permission
kindly given to me by the Editors of the Friends'
Quarterly Examiner, the ComhiU Magazine, and
the Hibbert Journal, to reprint articles which have
appeared in those periodicals.
C. E. S.
The Porch, Cambridge.
1908.
1 Quaker Strongholds, by C. B. S., published by Headley Bros.,
Bishopsgate Street Without. 4th Edition, 1907.
CONTENTS
PAOE
I RATIONAL MYSTICISM .... 1
II QUAKERISM AND FREE THOUGHT . 24
III THE QUAKER TRADITION. ... 41
IV WHAT DOES SILENCE MEAN? . . 57
V THE DOOR OP THE SANCTUARY . . 74
VI WAR AND SUPERFLUITIES ... 94
VII LIVING ALONE Ill
VIII THE FAITH OF THE UNLEARNED . 132
IX THE FEAR OF DEATH . .151
X SIGNS AND WONDERS IN DIVINE
GUIDANCE 166
LETTER TO YOUNG FRIENDS . . .180
CONCLUSION 187
RATIONAL MYSTICISM1
It will not, I hope, be inferred from the title
chosen for this paper that I am undertaking to treat
the subject of mysticism either historically, or from
the point of view of theology or psychology. All these
things would be quite beyond my power. My aim
is only to describe a certain position or experience
familiar to many of us in daily life, but not always
I think recognised with sufficient clearness even by
those to whom it belongs ; and to make some practical
suggestions as to our best wisdom regarding it.
In addition to the vagueness associated (perhaps
inevitably) with the name of mystic, there is a certain
ambiguity in its application to individuals. In calling
any one by that name one may be attributing to him
either a belief or a gift. As I understand the word,
a mystic is either one who has, or one who believes
in, a certain illumination from within. I wish this
1 An address given to the Sunday Society at Newnham
College.
8. 1
2 Thoughts on the Central Radiomce
evening, as far as I am able, to consider what is really
meant by the "inner light" of the mystic; what is
involved in its possession, or in the belief that others
possess it; and what is its relation to reason and
conscience.
I will begin by owning that I have no hesitation
in describing myself as a rational mystic. What
precisely does this claim mean?
It means, in the first place, that I share the belief
of the religious society to which I belong (the Society
of Friends) that there is given to every human being
a measure, or germ, of something of an illuminating
nature — something of which the early Friends often
spoke as " a seed of life " — a measure of that " light,
life, spirit and grace of Christ" which they recognised
as the gift of God to all men. They dwelt as much
on the universality as on the inwardness of the grace
of Christ — the power of God unto salvation. They
believed that this seed of life, if yielded to, obeyed,
and followed, would lead every one to salvation, with
or without the outward knowledge of the Gospel of
Christ.
To believe this is I suppose to be in some sense a
mystic. It is at any rate to believe that the " mystery
of godliness" is at work in all directions ; that
wherever there is a human spirit there is a Divine
process, a Divine possibility, the issues of which ex-
tend beyond human ken. And this faith is I believe
Rational Mysticism 3
emphatically rational, in the sense that many good
reasons may be given for holding it. I am not going
to attempt to set forth one of them ; but I wish
distinctly to make the claim of reasonableness for the
mystical position, although it may imply the existence
of something beyond reason ; or rather I claim it
with the more confidence on that very account, for
I believe that Reason itself points in the same
direction — that is to something beyond itself.
Those who have preached the doctrine of the
Light within have generally appealed with confidence
to the experience of their hearers, expecting to find
in every heart a witness to its reality. They have
met with a wide and general response ; yet their
doctrine is certainly not universally accepted There
certainly are people who do not recognise in them-
selves any such inner illumination. It may of course
be said that they must know best ; and that a light
which they are not conscious of possessing is no light
at all. I fully recognise that we cannot reasonably
hold a belief in the universality of saving Light, unless
we assume that the consciousness of light is not neces-
sarily co-extensive with its existence ; in other words
that that of which we speak under the figure of Light
may exist in a latent state. This is in fact my own
belief The indispensable and most beautiful figure of
Light points I believe to something which it is hard to
distinguish from the goodness and the grace of God ;
1—2
4 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
from the Divine Spirit and life and power. And if
we believe at all in this Divine power and grace, we
can hardly help thinking of it as universal. There
may indeed be some who still think of God's grace
as something to be bestowed only on a select few.
I believe that the increase of outward Light — the
growth of knowledge and of clearness of thought — is
fast rendering such views untenable by people living
in the open sunshine of our day. But I must not
plunge into the theological and psychological diffi-
culties of the question of universality.
Whatever our belief on this point, — whether we
regard the Light as a universal though often latent
possession of humanity — or whether we consider the
very possibility of a difference of opinion as evidence
against the universality of the inner Light itself —
whichever of these views may be the truest, our
present concern is not with them, but with the
meaning of spiritual illumination where it does exist.
It is quite certain that the degrees of such light
experienced by different people, and by the same
person at different times, do vary indefinitely. We
need not go far afield to find cases in which a feeble
and intermittent glimmer is all that is recognised in
the depths of which we are speaking. There are
people whose spiritual perception is so dim that they
hardly like to call it Light ; while others tell of a
glory of illumination as overpowering to the inward
Rationed Mysticism 5
vision as is the uncurtained light of the sun to the
steady gaze of the natural eye ; or it may be of flashes
of revelation, which have changed for them the whole
aspect of life as the blaze of lightning reveals the
midnight landscape.
Between these two extremes there seems to be
every variety of experience with regard to the light
vouchsafed ; and the study of " varieties of religious
experience" is certainly one of profound and growing
interest. It seems to me that one of the greatest
gains which have come and are coming to us from
the encounter between theology and natural science
by which we have been so severely shaken and sifted,
is this ; — that we are learning to recognise the infinite
variety and complexity of the conditions under which
people are struggling towards Truth, Goodness, and
Beauty. We are beginning to see that we cannot
blame people, the very focus of whose inner sight is
unlike our own, for not thinking or feeling as we
do on the deepest and most comprehensive of all
subjects.
Nevertheless Light and Darkness, Good and Evil,
Truth and Falsehood are for ever opposed ; and we
must I believe come more and more to recognise
that whatever else this mysterious life of ours may be,
it is certainly a school. And a school implies disci-
pline, and discipline implies a Teacher : and belief in
the Light within resolves itself into belief in an Inward
6 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
Monitor — in One whose Voice, once heard, must
necessarily be the supreme inspiration of our lives.
I said that in describing any one as a mystic you
may be attributing to him either a belief or a gift.
I have no hesitation in calling myself a mystic, and a
rational mystic, in the sense of believing in mystical
experience, and of considering myself as having
reasonable warrant for doing so. To call myself a
mystic in the other sense might seem to be claiming
not only a share in what I regard as a universal
possession, but an unusual degree of inward illumin-
ation. The gift of the mystic is I believe akin to the
gift of poetry. To call any one by that name
generally implies not only that he is a pupil in the
school of the inner life, but that he has a special
aptitude for learning the lessons there taught. You
will not I trust suspect me of claiming the possession
of this gift in any unusual degree. Yet I do wish it
to be understood that I speak from some degree of
first-hand experience, whether it be much or little as
compared with that of others, and whatever may
be my success or failure in the attempt to describe
it. I speak not only as believing that there is a
school of the inner, or " interior," life, but as having
in my measure been consciously under that discipline.
I regard myself then as a pupil in the school of
the inner or spiritual life ; I believe that school to be
open to all — and to be under the unceasing care and
Rationed Mysticism 7
guidance of the Central Source of all Good : Who is
Light and is Love. My faith as a mystic is the trust
that He " who opens forth the Light That doth both
shine and give us sight to see " is Himself my continual
Teacher, leading me by a way I know not towards all
truth, and directing my heart and mind to the lessons
He would have me learn. The essence of the mys-
tical faith is the belief in an actual spiritual inter-
course between us human beings and the Father of
our spirits — an interchange of meaning as real as
that which takes place between one human being and
another. In other words, "he that cometh unto God
must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him." Almost all serious
thinkers hold in some sense or other the first article
of this short Creed — " God is" — but the second article,
that " He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
Him" is the special and much disputed foundation of
all personal religion ; a foundation to which the posses-
sion in any degree of the mystical faculty implies a
special facility of access. The reality of the reward,
or rather in more modern phrase of the response, as-
sured to all true seekers is that to which we who have
been disciples in that school of the inner life of which
I have been speaking must continually desire to bear
witness.
I say the inner life ; for we must remember that
our present enquiry is as to the teaching of the Light
8 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
Within — that is of the Light which shines in the inner-
most, central, spiritual region. In my view, as in that,
I believe, of every mystic, all things, whether belonging
to individual or to universal experience, are ranged
in an order which we can scarcely help calling
spherical, according to the degree of their nearness
to the Centre ; the perishing or transitory things being
outward, and those which being perpetually renewed
may be called imperishable, being within. And all
life is full of teaching; the outermost and most
transient as well as the deepest and most permanent
of events or impressions : and all Light is one, and
the direct gift of God, whether it be directed to the
inner or the outer regions of life. All Light is one,
and all nature may be pervaded by it ; but all
things cannot be seen from one point of view. The
truths which we call spiritual can be discerned only
from the spiritual, that is the innermost region of our
being. It is in this region that the mystic is at home..
Here he feels it good to be. Here it is that the
Divine teaching deals with all that most deeply con-
cerns us ; and gives us, as it were, the key to mysteries
which lie at the root of more outward matters. For
the innermost or central principles of life must domi-
nate the superficial and trivial. They must at any
rate dejv/re be supreme, and their de facto supremacy
is I suppose the condition of all perfectly harmonious
life and character.
Rational Mysticism 9
" Whatsoever doth make manifest is light1." But
the figure of light, eloquent and widely applicable
as it is, is not by itself sufficient to convey all the truth
to which it refers. Light is too impersonal a thing
to be an entirely satisfying type of the Father's
manner of responding to the cry of His children. We
find ourselves necessarily impelled in describing the
innermost faith of His worshippers to use also the
metaphors of the life-giving breath, of the Fountain of
living waters, and above all of the inspeaking Voice,
if we hope to suggest ever so faintly that experience
of all-penetrating tenderness of which the sojourners
in the innermost sanctuary are allowed at times to
taste. Wherever we look, without as well as within,
those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will find
types and parables teaching us something of God and
of His Providence. " The heavens declare the glory
of God," and the thunder may represent to us His
Voice — but these do not enter so deeply into our
souls, — they do not convey so penetrating a conscious-
ness of the Divine Presence, — as the still small Voice
which we may hear in our own hearts when we are
1 There is yet another function of light made known to us by
modern science, to which I cannot resist a passing reference, as
wonderfully justifying the prophetic insight of George Pox in his
well-known teaching that " the light which shows you your sins
is that which heals them." The power of light actually to heal
deadly disease must, in the last few years have thrilled many a
devout imagination with its suggestion of spiritual meaning.
10 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
alone with Him, which speaks to each one of us in
a language addressed to us individually, with a
significance which almost must be in a large degree
incommunicable. The experience of Divine Guidance
and of answered prayer is an experience belonging
to the innermost depth of each life ; soul-subduing
and inwardly enlightening to the one to whom it
comes, but, like the oil in the parable, not always to
be shared at will.
Yet although the particular communications re-
ceived may be among the hidden things — a part of
"the secret of the Lord" which "is with them that
fear Him" — yet we cannot doubt that He who is " no
respecter of persons" deals with others in this matter
as He does with ourselves. We must believe that
the Light and the Voice which are reverently held to
typify the Father's response to our need of Him — the
means by which mind communicates with mind and
spirit with spirit — are an all-pervading element of
the order under which we live. In that innermost
region of which we are speaking personal differences
seem to disappear. In the depths we are all akin,
and we may indeed all be one.
At any rate there are laws in this inward kingdom
of heaven which it must concern us all to know, and
which we can sometimes help one another to inter-
pret. The question how we discern the Divine Voice
or the Divine Light from the other voices and the
Rational Mysticism 11
other lights to which we may find it easier to attend
is not an easy one to answer theoretically. In practice
I think we all find that the power fully and clearly to
interpret the Divine Voice is but gradually acquired,
just as is the case with all human intercourse ; —
while yet there is from the very dawn of consciousness
some exchange of meaning as between a mother and
her child. It would be hard indeed to explain the
process by which an infant learns to receive com-
munications from its mother ; but wonderful and
mysterious as that process is, we cannot doubt its
reality. And so in the life of the human spirit, there
may never have been a time to which we can look
back when we were not in some sense aware of the
overshadowing Presence of Him in whom we live and
move and have our being ; while as time goes on,
this vague sense of a Presence prepares the way for
an increasingly distinct and reasoned belief in the
theory, and a growing power in the practice, of
prayer.
But as that practice loses its instinctive character,
and is gradually matured into a conscious energy of
the soul, and directed towards definite ends, we have
to encounter not only distractions from without, but
questionings from within. However blessedly our
childhood may have been sheltered, I suppose that
for all of us as we grow older, the sense of the
Divine Presence is at times disturbed and confused,
if not permanently obscured, by these questionings
12 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
and distractions. Doubts also will arise, not only as
to the efficacy, but even as to the Tightness of prayer.
To bear witness from first-hand experience to the
possibility and the blessedness of actual communion
with God is the special office of the mystic.
And here we come to the question what is the
relation of the inner light of the mystic to reason
and conscience.
I said that I call myself a rational mystic, in the
sense of believing that Reason confirms, or at the least
allows, the claim of the mystic to be aware of the
immediate presence of God. But there is another
sense in which I must describe the mysticism I believe
in as Rational. I mean that I believe in that type
of mysticism which renders to Reason that which is
Reason's, as well as to intuition that which belongs to
intuition. I believe the position of the mystic to be,
as has often been pointed out, for himself " unassail-
able " ; but I also agree with those who say that
the mystic can claim no authority for any verbal
proposition on the strength of his own intuition. So
far from making the claim which a recent writer in
the Hibbert journal attributes to mystics in general,
that "feeling can, as such, deliver ontological messages
which are of final validity,"1 I believe that intuition
cannot supply the forms of verbal propositions at alL
It would seem to consist rather in the peculiar
1 "Sources of the Mystical Revelation," by Prof. G. A. Coe.
Hibbert Journal, Jan. 1908.
Rational Mysticism 13
intensity and fulness of meaning with which for some
people the language relating to spiritual things is
invested by the glowing quality of their own inner
experience ; or in the flash of certainty by which a
solution may be lighted up, to be afterwards verified
and tested by purely intellectual processes. I think
that the tendency of the characteristically mystical
mind is not to occupy itself with propositions of even
the simplest kind — still less with theological or meta-
physical subtleties — but rather to dwell in a soul-
satisfying contemplation on the Realities with which
the highest Reason is also occupied, though in a
different way. I should say that the mystical
consciousness is immediately aware of, and is
profoundly affected by, that to which Reason gives
a name, and points as it were from afar off. No
doubt the sense of assurance which specially belongs
to the intuitive faculty (be that what it may) is apt
to overflow into the opinions held by each individual
mystic, and not only into opinions but into symbols
and allegories of all kinds ; and those who have not
learnt to analyse their own mental processes often
fail to distinguish their inward sense of certainty from
the possession of an intellectual warrant for positive
statement. In point of fact the mystical sense of
inward illumination has been found in combination
with the most contradictory creeds ; and the confusion
of feeling with knowledge has brought discredit on the
14 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
name of mysticism. But the true mystic will rather
stand aloof from controversial thought, even his own,
and is content to submit to Reason whatever can be
reasoned about, fixing his own gaze not on explanation
or proof, but on the Being of Whom in virtue of this
mysterious faculty he is so vividly aware.
The rays of light from within and from without
are not indeed always precisely distinguishable from
one another. They seem to meet and blend in some
central region of our being. It is only in proportion
to our openness to both that we can have the humble
yet well-founded assurance of having rightly inter-
preted Divine Guidance. The perfect blending and
consensus of both sources of illumination is the final
warrant for entire conviction. Let me dwell for a
moment on this thought of the distinction and the
combination between the inner and outer light.
By the outer light I mean all the abundant
instruction of experience, history, and observation —
reaching us partly through our own and partly through
other minds. Such reflected or indirect light reaches
us from all quarters, and is mostly common property,
amenable to the judgment of reason, and concerned
with matters of fact, with events, and with the laws of
nature. But in the central innermost region of our
minds there shines one pure ray of direct Light from
the very Throne of God ; one ray which belongs to
each one individually ; which is for that one supreme
Rational Mysticism 15
and apart ; the ray which shining from the heaven-
ward side of conscience, and so enlightening and
purifying it, must of necessity dominate the whole
being. The light reflected from the broad fields of
experience would be incomplete without the direct
and supreme ray from the Source of Light ; and the
heavenly light itself not only welcomes but demands
the admission of reflected light from without, as a
preservative against personal bias, and spiritual
pride and self-deception.
For it must not be supposed that the claim to
inward enlightenment is a claim to infallibility. Too
often, I know, it may degenerate, or be supposed to
degenerate, into such presumption. But in truth the
claim of the mystic to inward enlightenment is the
claim to be under correction ; to be a pupil in the school
of Divine discipline ; and the mistakes and even the
faults which may in the innermost region require the
correction, at once severe and tender, of that school
are matters of far greater importance than can belong
to any outward fault or error. In that innermost region
of our being into which the Light from above shines
most directly there may be flaws of terrible distorting
power ; and to go astray here is to risk the deepest
downfall. In the Sanctuary of God there is indeed a
Divine chastening ; and for those who willingly submit
to it, — but for those only, — a perpetual calm. Here is
the joy which never shines so brightly as in tribulation ;
16 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
not only through the quenching of lower lights, but
because for the creature the joy of joys must needs
be to prefer the Will of the Creator to its own — to
achieve in its measure order at its own expense. That
which shows us this joy is the innermost Light — the
"Radiancy Divine" which when kindled by the gift of
God in any human spirit must thence in turn stream
forth for the illumination of other spirits, whether by
words, or silently in the life. The path of the mystic
is lighted not only by the Presence of the Father of
Lights, but also by that of the Shining Ones who are
His messengers.
Although the true mystic is occupied not by words
but by contemplation, yet even mystics must of
course sometimes use words. The difference between
them and other people is not so much in the content
of the creeds they may accept, as in the emphasis and
value of certain words on their lips. The same words
in different minds vary of course indefinitely not only
in the direction but in the intensity of their meaning.
We know how to the Indian yogi the syllable " Om "
seems to contain matter for life-long contemplation.
I do not suppose that the word conveys much to the
non-mystical mind, or that those to whom it means
most are much inclined to explain it.
To come nearer home, some of us may remember
how Mme Guion in her autobiography complains
that as her own inner experience rose from height to
Rational Mysticism 17
height, and all things were transfigured and made
new, as she herself was changed (to use the Apostle's
words) " from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of
the Lord," she yet could find no new language in
which to unfold these increasingly blissful experiences.
With a curiously human touch, she remarks on the
inconvenience of the fact that the very words in
which alone she could describe her latest revelations
were often used by people in a quite elementary stage
of religious experience to describe phases she had
long ago left behind. I have heard from living lips a
very similar complaint.
The truth is that it is difficult to speak at all —
still more to speak at once accurately and adequately
— of an experience which even in its most fragment-
ary and intermittent form reveals so wonderful a
potential transfiguration of life. In dwelling upon
what one knows to be possible, it may well happen
that one appears to be claiming more than will be
recognised by others as actually belonging to one.
Whatever allowance may have to be made for
human imperfection and infirmity, no one I think
can read Mme Guion's autobiography without feeling
that for her the simplest words in which the soul's
relation to God could be described had indeed be-
come filled with an incommunicable radiance. And
her history shows plainly how completely the faith of
the true mystic may be independent of any scaffolding
18 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
of theory. Again and again when doubts were cast
on her orthodoxy she professed her absolute readi-
ness to submit to the correction of the Church every
word she had written. I do not remember that
actual retractation was ever required of her. But
she clearly felt that Orthodoxy was not her affair.
She knew herself to be a devout Catholic in heart,
and desired nothing better than to be corrected by
the authorities she recognised And she knew with
far more unshakeable certainty that no corrections
and no persecutions could touch her inward sense of
the Presence and the Love of God ; and in comparison
of that all else was as dust in the balance.
I believe then that the functions of the mystical
insight and those of the Reason are so to speak com-
plementary, not opposed ; and that the ideal state is
one in which they are harmoniously combined. It is
well known that such a combination is possible, though
rare. It would not be difficult to name instances in
which much practical efficiency and shrewdness have
been in full exercise alongside of a deep fund of
mystical experience, and have even perhaps acquired
an increased keenness from the atmosphere of
disinterested equanimity belonging to those whose
innermost devotion is for ever fixed on that which
is eternal
How far this combination of mystical conscious-
ness of the Presence of God with due and even ener-
Rational Mysticism 19
getic attention to the actual problems of life is within
our reach, I dare not attempt to say. We cannot, I
suppose, make ourselves mystics any more than we
can make ourselves poets. We must certainly
recognise that it is much easier, or at least more
natural, to some than to others to live the life of faith.
Some people may be called "naturally religious," as
having as it were an eye for the unseen, as others
have an ear for music, or an eye for colour. The
mystic in this sense is one whose mind's eye is
focussed for the innermost region ; who is at home in
the depths. Naturally this peculiarity must affect all
his thought ; not as changing the direction of his
beliefs, but because of the differences in value, and in
intensity of belief, which must be caused by so pro-
found a difference of experience as that between the
devout disciple and the dispassionate reasoner. It is
impossible not to hold more firmly a belief by means
of which one has been deeply stirred and touched
than the same belief can be held by one who has but
studied it calmly as through a glass or from a distance.
The creed of the mystic, although it may consist of
the very same words as that of the non-mystical
thinker, will be less at the mercy of intellectual
difliculties, and will as I believe have a richer and
fuller quality ; but whether we shall consider this as
an advantage or as a source of delusion depends of
course on our theological or philosophical pre-suppo-
2—2
20 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
sitions ; and I will not pursue the question. I prefer
to consider how far the state of things which seems
to me to be the ideal one — that namely in which
inward and outward illumination blend into one and
pervade the whole life — can be said to depend on our
own endeavours.
We must I think in the first place recognise that
both intuition and reason are gifts of God and elements
of the spiritual gravitation by which we are drawn
to Him who is our Centre. Instead of setting up one
against the other, we can seek in every decision and
in every action, to steep our minds in both reason
and faith. I believe it to be as truly a duty to
submit every impulse to the discipline and test of
reason, as it is to keep burning the pure flame of
devotion to the Most High by which alone Reason
can be raised to the level of Wisdom. We can
cultivate the power, more or less latent, I imagine, in
every mind, of passing at will from surface to depth
and from depth to surface. I do not know how far
others may be conscious of a power to sink into the
depths of their own minds. To some people I know
that such expressions seem unmeaning. But to
others — of whom I am one — this power, whatever
its right name, is as the power to flee to a City of
Refuge. And it is as necessary a condition of clear
spiritual vision as is the power of focussing the out-
ward eyes to natural vision. And what in conclusion
Rational Mysticism 21
I wish to urge is that there are two chief means
by which the clearness of our Inner Light — or Vision
— may be maintained and increased. These are
quietness and obedience.
The connection between mysticism and quietness
(or even Quietism) is obvious and familiar to us all.
I am anxious to make it clear that I am not pleading
under the name of Rational Mysticism for the culti-
vation of ecstatic or hypnotic conditions. I do not
believe that it is good to encourage anything
approaching to the abnormal physical states which
result in trances and visions. Such things may have
their place and significance ; but they hardly deserve
to be called rational. The mystical sense I value
owes nothing to the darkness. It is emphatically a
consciousness of the clear shining of spiritual light ;
of the light of truth as to whatever is deepest and
most permanent and far reaching in its spiritual im-
port and ethical character ; the light by which we
are led to prefer high and noble ideals to any mere
self-gratification ; the light in which we see that he
who will save his life shall lose it, and that there is
nothing worth having in exchange for our souls. Such
light as this is not to be gained by occult practices,
but by single-hearted devotion to the Highest. It is
essentially the light of day ; the same light by which
our outer life, our daily work and thought are in their
measure lighted up, but which is rightfully dominant
22 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
over all lower lights when in its innermost shining
it penetrates into that central depth which we call
our spiritual life. If we are to have even a glimpse
of the innermost and unspeakable joys of the spirit —
if we are to rise above pain and sorrow and bitterness
into the pure serenity of the heaven within — if we
are to "know that He is God" — we must be still.
This necessity is as much rational as mystical. No
deep wisdom can be attained without deliberate
thought. No clear impressions, either from above or
from without, can be received by a mind turbid with
excitement, and agitated by a crowd of distrac-
tions. The stillness needed for the clear shining
of light within is incompatible with hurry.
This is not the quiet of inaction, or of idle
dreaming, but the quiet of a final choice. Nothing
sets the heart at rest like a final choice. And no
choice can be really final which is not fixed on the
Highest. Therefore quietness and obedience are in
truth one. We may of course talk of obeying any-
thing, even our whims ; but it is only the unchanging,
the unseen and eternal things which can truly and
permanently rule us, and give us that rest — that
"quietness and confidence" — which is our strength.
To be faithful to the light we have is the one certain
way to have more. All light is from God ; and that
which shines into the innermost region of heart, mind
and will must necessarily radiate thence in all direc-
Rational Mysticism 23
tions, spreading its purifying healing power to the
very outermost range of our atmosphere. This light
does not run counter to the dictates of reason, of
conscience, of common sense, propriety, or wisdom.
It inspires, harmonizes and transfigures them all. It
is indeed the very light of life — the light which
lighteneth every man that cometh into the world — to
walk in which is to walk with God.
QUAKERISM AND FREE THOUGHT.
It seems to us, in the twentieth century, a strange
thing that the words Free Thought and Free Thinker
should ever have had a connotation of reproach. There
may come a time when it will be equally surprising
that Agnosticism should for so many seem to be
equivalent to Atheism. But it is probably inevitable
that words of this kind, which of necessity cover a
great variety of shades of meaning, should, in the eyes
of fervent believers, come to represent chiefly the
element of opposition which they undoubtedly con-
tain. I suppose that our native combativeness is
such that every name chosen as a badge tends to
become a war-cry. Our party system not only
promotes but is the outcome of a love of sharp
divisions, which tends, in its very eagerness, to
approach truth by zigzag paths — like forked light-
ning.
Now, I am far from wishing to object altogether
to this method of striking out truth, but there is a
Quakerism cmd Free Thought 25
region in which it ceases to be appropriate. Contro-
versy is nowhere hotter than in the surroundings and
accessories of faith, but in the region of faith itself I
hold it to be out of place — not only in the sense of un-
fitness, but of actual incompatibility. "A solemn state
of mind," says William James, "is never crude or
simple ; it seems to contain a certain measure of its
own opposite in solution. A solemn joy preserves
a certain bitterness in its sweetness, and a solemn
sorrow is one to which we intimately consent." 1 It
is in this region of solemnity, of comprehensive
recognition of good and evil, that we dwell when we
enter into the deep things of faith. That spiritual
insight which we call faith — a power closely akin to
hope and love — must be deep enough to meet reason
at its source. It does not oppose — it holds in solution
opposing thoughts. It has nothing to fear from the
activity of the critical and intellectual faculties, for
its very life is in the Light.
The mystical attitude towards religious questions
(which is the root of Quakerism) is in its ideal one of
solemnity in this sense. It is the attitude of those
who have penetrated to a depth of inward experience
at which contradiction and controversy are left be-
hind. Friends recognise no authority to decide
religious questions as officially belonging to any
Society; they content themselves with looking for
1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 48.
26 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
" right guidance from above," in the conviction that
it is assured to all who honestly seek for it. In other
words, they regard religious belief as the outcome of
religious experience rather than as a body of doctrine
entrusted to the Church or to be learnt from Scrip-
ture ; they look for, and find, such solution of
problems as they need in the shining of light within,
not in explanations from without. They do, it is true,
believe that this Divine guidance is more surely
recognised and interpreted by the united judgment
of fellow disciples than it can be by any individual
judgment, and therefore have always encouraged
individuals to bring forward matters of common
concern in which they have felt individually called to
action, for the united consideration of the periodical
meetings held for this and other purposes; but
though the decisions of these meetings being placed
on record have resulted in a sort of code of regulations
for the good order of the Society, yet this code itself
is subject to periodical revision, and is in no way
binding on the individual conscience. The bond of
union amongst Friends lies in the community not of
opinions but of discipleship ; it is emphatically within
— at the quiet heart of things — not where the strife
of tongues is heard.
The result is, or ought to be, an habitual sense of
absolute freedom in the search for truth ; freedom
being, as I suppose we shall all agree, not lawlessness,
Quakerism and Free Thought 27
but the absence of external restraint — a state of
being controlled only from within — which, in our view,
includes the idea of control from above. The well-
known disuse by Friends of creeds and formularies
springs from this habit of dependence on "right
guidance" alone as all sufficient. I suppose we are
all familiar with the way in which, during the last
century, Friends have faltered in their allegiance to
this principle, and have sought, in various ways and
on various occasions, to supply by definite declarations
of faith the supposed lack of " sound doctrine," or, at
any rate, of security for the soundness of doctrine.
Had this attempt been successful, we should, I believe,
have lost the very key of our position as witnesses
to the compatibility of the deepest faith with the
utmost freedom of thought. Happily, no actual
change has been made in this direction, and we still
enjoy as a Society our ancient immunity from
prescribed standards of orthodoxy.
I believe this to be a privilege as valuable to faith
as to reason, if, indeed, we can thus separate the two
powers by which we recognise the Central Light. In
their outflowing from that centre no doubt they become
distinct, but to myself it appears that they are at
bottom and essentially one, constituting in their one-
ness the faculty of spiritual vision.
However this may be, it is obvious that in these
days the progress of thought has been such as to
28 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
cause severe disturbance to any faith which is
wedded to words. The special mission of Friends
seems to be to exemplify the truth that faith is not
dependent on words, but is, rather, the source of all
their deepest value. We must not, I believe, shrink
from recognising the fact that there is much in our
religious attitude which is common to all Free-
thinkers. Quakerism has always commanded an un-
usual degree of respect from those rebels against the
Church whose revolt has proceeded from a real zeal
for truth and honesty. We know Voltaire's appre-
ciation of the Quaker position, and this has been
re-echoed in our own time by more than one Agnostic
of the Voltairean type. They recognise the soundness
of the position implied in the words, " Friends of the
Truth" ; and we may thankfully believe that they
recognise also a degree of faithfulness to that
profession in the actual inheritors of the title.
The disuse not only of creeds and formularies
but of the clerical office and of sacraments is a
further extension of the ground common to Friends
and Freethinkers. The common ground is, in fact,
so extensive that some may feel that what needs to
be emphasized is the underlying distinction. There
have been those who have considered it an almost
unintelligible paradox that Quakers should be
reckoned as Christians at all ; assuming, as they do,
that Christianity, or a "state of grace," depends
Quakerism and Free Thought 29
upon the use of ordinances. To have afforded
irresistible proof to the contrary is no small service
to the cause of piety.
Where, then, lies the fundamental distinction
between the typical Quaker and the typical Free-
thinker ? Historically, of course, it is familiar truth
that the early Friends were Christians of an intense
type. George Fox's career as a preacher may be
traced to his experience that, when none of the
priests could " speak to his condition," a voice spoke
to him in the memorable words, " There is one, even
Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition " ; and
no reader of his Journal or Epistles could doubt his
ardent devotion to Christ as the Word, the Lamb,
the Light of the world.
But this, it may be said, though true as a matter of
fact of the early Friends, is not necessarily true of
all who bear their name ; especially is it uncertain as
to hereditary Friends under the Quaker system of
birthright membership, by which the children of
Friends inherit full membership in the Society with-
out any preliminary rite or declaration of faith.
Such a system obviously makes it possible for many
to be through life Friends in name only, without any
real conviction of the truth of our fundamental
principle. I have not observed that infant baptism,
or even confirmation, afford any guarantee against
a similarly nominal membership in other religious
bodies. But, apart from this question of boundaries,
30 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
what, it may be asked, is the conviction or the
experience which constitutes the essence of Quaker-
ism? What do we mean by "true convincement"?
What is Quakerism at its best and purest?
When George Fox and his companions called
themselves "Friends of the Truth," we must, I think,
recognise that they had in mind the words, "I am
the way, the truth, and the life " ; and " Ye are my
friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." By
the Truth they meant not merely abstract truth, but
Him whom they regarded as the Light of the world.
To obey the Light meant for them the same thing as
to follow the Lamb. From that time onwards, this
has been the core of Quakerism — not only in theory
but in fact. Thought has been, theoretically at
least, free, but allegiance to Christ has been un-
wavering; and sincerity has, in fact, winnowed out
from the counsels of the Society, and even from the
list of members, many — probably most — of those who
have found themselves unable to maintain this
allegiance. There would, indeed, be no place for
non-Christians in the inner circle of those who
conduct the affairs of the Society, the central object
and purpose of its existence being, briefly, obedience to
that teaching of which the Sermon on the Mount gives
the most typical instance on record. The heart and
core of Quakerism, because that of Christianity itself,
is the following of Jesus Christ, and the worship in
His Name of the Father whom He reveals.
Quakerism and Free Thought 31
How is this discipleship related to freedom of
thought ?
Discipleship, of course, implies some fixed con-
victions— at the very lowest, the conviction that the
Master is trustworthy ; but fixed convictions are in
no way incompatible with — perhaps rather conducive
to — freedom of thought. (No one, for instance,
supposes it essential to the freedom of arithmetical
thought to be able to regard two and two as five.)
The freest thought is not necessarily that which goes
farthest afield, but that which is least warped by bias
and prejudice, and least hampered by fear of conse-
quences,— amongst which consequences the disap-
proval of the Society to which we may belong is one
of the most potent. A great deal of religious teaching
certainly has a warping effect ; so, I believe, has
a great deal of teaching of the opposite kind. A
steady confidence in Divine guidance, on the other
hand, tends, I believe, to open and fearless reverence.
Every Society must have some fixed convictions as
its principles of united action, and the fundamental
principle of our Society is certainly discipleship —
obedience to the teaching of Jesus Christ. But what
is that teaching ?
This is a question which the Society does not
undertake to answer for individuals, though its very
existence as a Society is a perpetual witness to the
fact and the importance of discipleship. I regard
32 Thoughts on the Central Radfcmce
Quakerism as admitting of the widest possible range
of thought which can co-exist with obedience to such
teaching as the individual himself recognises as
derived from Christ ; and this, of course, implies the
free exercise of the reason in ascertaining what that
teaching actually is.
Now we come here upon the very origin and
essence of the peculiarity of Quakerism as compared
with other forms of Christianity, and of the pecu-
liarity of what we may call the mystical type of
Quakerism as compared with the more modern and
less exclusive development which seems to be rapidly
assimilating the Society to the outer world, both
as to its usages and customs, and as to its standards
of orthodoxy. The distinguishing peculiarity of
Quakerism undoubtedly lies in its mystical character.
By this much-abused word, mystical, I mean the view
of life which springs from a consciousness of illumi-
nation from within. It is a temper of mind, as we all
know, which may be found in combination with every
variety of religious, perhaps even of non-religious,
belief. Inward illumination is certainly not depen-
dent upon any kind of orthodoxy. But the tendency,
or the faculty, as it existed in the founders of our
Society, was in point of fact combined with a belief
in Christian doctrines such as made it inevitable that
they should identify the Light sinning in their own
hearts with that glory which they saw "in the face of
Qimkerism and Free Thought 33
Jesus Christ." Quakerism is the recognition of this
identity of the Light within with the " Light of the
World " — it is a fusion of the historical and mystical
faiths.
In these days we have all had to encounter a
vigorous and sometimes rough handling of what is
called "historical Christianity." The Bible and all
its contents are being dealt with in a way which is
certainly calculated to shake whatever can be shaken,
and it would be idle to deny that this process has
laid bare an unsuspected degree of uncertainty as to
the exact words uttered by Jesus of Nazareth. It is
no longer possible to rely upon Scriptural records
alone as giving us any complete and certain knowledge
of His teaching. And even were there no uncertainty
as to the very words used by Him, the inherent
ambiguity of all language must have been brought
vividly home to most of us by the discussions, so
freely published in the last half-century, as to the
real meaning of passages the mere letter of which is
the least doubtful.
My own belief is that the Bible must gain by
being dealt with in the same manner as all other
books. The treasures of its inspiration, the incom-
parable beauty and depth of its spiritual teaching,
and the profound importance of its history must
always secure for it the reverence alike of the learned
and the simple ; and, owing to it, as we do, the
s. 3
34 Thoughts mi the, Central Radiance
strongest and purest influence that can be exercised
by written words on the human mind, there is no fear
of its losing its hold on our affections through ceasing
to be the object of an unreasoning idolatry.
But, as a result of the searching processes of
historical criticism, all of us, even the least learned,
are being thrown back on one or other of the two
main sources of that practical certainty, that un-
hesitating conviction, which we all instinctively crave
in regard to our deepest concern for time and for
eternity. We need a living Voice, if only to interpret
for us that written Word which we may regard as
containing the standard of right belief on the greatest
of all questions. Some seek for this living inter-
pretation at the hands of the Church as represented
by its ordained ministers. Others seek and find it in
their "free Teacher," the "Christ within," to whom
our Quaker predecessors looked with a confidence
they could feel in no human teachers, whatever their
official position. The priest must, of necessity, stand
without us. The Voice to which we as Friends are
pledged to listen is the "inspeaMng voice" of the
One who alone "can speak to our condition."
And again we must ask what is the teaching of
our Inward Guide and Monitor ? What are the sub-
jects on which we may reasonably claim that this
Teacher leaves us in no uncertainty ? And again we
must reply, in regard to the inner teaching of the
Quakerism and Free Thought 35
Spirit, as we did in regard to the outer teaching of
Scripture, that its boundaries are nowhere precisely
laid down — that what it promises us is not a complete
theology but an unfailing guardianship. The Voice
which we are entitled to call the voice of our " free
Teacher" calls us ever upwards. It assures us per-
petually of the Father's love ; it] reproves as well as
encourages ; it is at one with all the unshaken truth
conveyed in the Gospel story, and written on the
" fleshly tables of the hearts" of " a great multitude
whom no man can number" ; it tells of One Who
wipes all tears from our eyes, and it leads us "with joy
to draw water out of the wells of salvation."
But this in-speaking Voice, though easily under-
stood by the obedient and child-like heart, is not
always rightly interpreted, even in its simplest instruc-
tions. The conscience to which this Voice speaks —
through which the inner Light shines — is itself liable
to error and perversion, and may thus distort the mes-
sage from above, or may fail to distinguish it from
other promptings. Thus the claim to be under the
instruction of the living and free Teacher is by no
means a claim to infallibility. It is much more
nearly a claim to be under correction, for, as George
Fox teaches, the same Light which shows us our
faults is the Light which heals.
The very fact that a consciousness of illumination
from within is found in combination with every
3—2
36 Thoughts on the Central Radicvnce
variety of theological opinion shows that it cannot
be appealed to for the decision of abstract and
speculative questions. Such doctrines, for example,
as those relating to the nature and origin of sin, the
meaning of conversion, justification, grace, ordi-
nances, the Atonement, the sense in which we may
or ought to regard Jesus Christ as divine, the mean-
ing of resurrection, the authority of the Church, —
these and many other deep and abstruse matters on
which it has been sought to obtain unanimity by
creeds and declarations of faith lie outside that inner-
most region in which alone can be entire unity. On
these doctrinal questions, divergence, being obviously
inevitable, must, so far as it is in good faith, be
innocent. The Light within is spiritual, not merely
intellectual But, as its radiance is shed upon the
comparatively outward region of intellectual diver-
gence, it does, no doubt, lead each obedient spirit
nearer and nearer to such truth as makes for edifica-
tion ; and obedience to truth after truth as it comes
in sight is, no doubt, the path which leads to the
highest and clearest understanding of spiritual
realities. It leads also, I believe, to the utmost
readiness to accept correction in the region of
thought ; and to a steadfast resolve not to be bound,
or to attempt to bind others, to verbal propositions
on speculative subjects.
It is, indeed, a solemn and an awful thought that
Quakerism and Free Thought 37
as the outward teaching of our Master becomes less
and less precisely outlined, his disciples are more
and more thrown back upon the thought of Him
as the Light — the Word of God— the brightness of
the Father's glory — the "Eadiancy Divine" shining
into our hearts and penetrating our lives. " If I go
not away the Comforter will not come unto you."
That which is seen is temporal ; that which is unseen
is eternal.
Perhaps one of the most perplexing thoughts
to many devout minds in these days is the un-
deniable and often remarkable goodness of many
unbelievers. We are learning more and more to
recognize how far the difference between good and
bad is from coinciding with the difference between
religious and non-religious people. This is not to
say that religion has no influence on ethics, but that
ethics rests on a foundation broader than any par-
ticular form of religious belief. Whether the foun-
dation of ethics is other than, or broader and deeper
than, that of religion itself is a question which must
wait till the meaning of religion is more clearly
defined and agreed on than I believe it to be at
present. Meanwhile there are those who go so far
as to think that all degrees of moral excellence
being, apparently, attainable without religious belief,
that belief is shown to be superfluous, and if super-
fluous, then not fundamentally true. There is, I
38 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
think, some real weight in these considerations,
although they seem to me to apply only to particular
tenets, not to religion itself They are, however, at
the lowest, of importance in counteracting the natural
tendency of human beings, especially of the more
fervent spirits, to think that their own pattern is the
only right one.
But when we look closely into the difference
between Agnostics of the best type and those who,
in sincerity, profess themselves disciples of Jesus
Christ, we cannot help being aware of a difference,
hard to define, but all-pervading. While we must
believe (as William Penn so nobly sets forth in
No Cross No Crown), that all, even the heathen, who
are faithful to the light they have are through
obedience building on the Bock, we cannot but be
aware that there are some who, in so following
Christ as to be made one with Him, have found the
pearl of great price for which all else is well lost.
These dwell in a region of experience which the
others ignore. For them all experience — in a
supreme sense all painful experience, the experience
of the Cross — is illuminated by the joy of obedience,
by the fellowship of His sufferings. Such an expe-
rience of inward illumination, bringing with it that
"rejoicing in tribulation" which convinces that
" all things " do indeed " work together for good to
them that love God," cannot but be recognized in
Quakerism and Free Thought 39
the lives of those who yield themselves wholly to it.
To have — or, at least, earnestly to seek — this expe-
rience of a "life hid with Christ in God" is the real
mark of "a Friend of the Truth" in the widest and
deepest sense of those words. Obviously it must
colour the whole character, and must affect the whole
direction of energy. But it is an experience belong-
ing to the innermost region, and one of which those
in whom it is the most real are, perhaps, the least
likely to speak very freely.
To be inwardly conscious of an upspringing foun-
tain of life and light can certainly not cramp or
hinder thought, but it may well lessen its eagerness ;
for this consciousness lays to rest the craving for a
solution of the " riddle of existence," and quenches
the thirst of the soul by which so much of the rest-
lessness of enquiry is prompted. A great trust and
a great peace naturally promote openness to light
from all quarters, but will neither stimulate nor
check speculative thought. I think, therefore, that
Quakerism and Free Thought are not really opposed,
but rather that they occupy different provinces.
Quakerism is essentially inward — a pressing towards
the centre. When we speak of the Light Within,
we mean the Light which shines in the innermost
and central region of our being — the same Light
which shines in the innermost and central region of
all being — the Light of the Spirit. When we speak
40 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
of free thought, we mean that unfettered exercise of
the discursive reason which has for its province all
things, material or immaterial, which can be known
to the human mind — a kind of necessarily outgoing
or radiating activity, the centrifugal as compared
with the centripetal force of the mind. It is obvious
that Truth cannot contradict itself. I believe the
danger of Free Thought to be, not that of contradict-
ing any doctrine really worth holding, but rather
that of diverting attention from "the one thing
needful" to a multitude of less important objects.
It wars, not against truth, but against concentration
of mind. It is essential to the preservation of
sanity and the correction of prejudice, but it cannot,
without injury to the whole being, be allowed to take
the place of contemplation and of adoration.
THE QUAKER TRADITION.
Such an expression as " Quaker Tradition " has a
certain flavour of paradox. For the essential peculi-
arity of Quakerism is assuredly its religious inward-
ness—in other words, its mystical attitude. And it is
obvious that there can be no such thing as a school
of mysticism ; the essential characteristic of the
mystic being dependence on an illumination from
within, which must from its very nature be regarded
as of paramount authority for the mystic himself, and
which thus involves a measure of independence of
outward teaching. But while mysticism itself cannot
be taught, it is quite possible to teach respect for it.
If, on the one hand, the habit of reliance on the Light
within tends to produce independence of dogmatic
teaching, it must be remembered on the other hand
that the existence and authority of that Light is
itself a dogma, which can be taught like any other
doctrine ; and it has in fact been handed down from
generation to generation of hereditary Friends, and
impressed upon them by every kind of traditional
42 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
practice, even to the extent of producing in some
minds a vehement reaction.
For to believe that there is an Inner Light is one
thing ; to see it with the eyes of one's own mind is quite
another thing. All hereditary Friends have been
taught to believe in it, but all Friends are not born
mystics ; and to those whose knowledge of inward
Light is mainly second-hand, and therefore very im-
perfect, the system which has been built on faith in it
must needs be unsatisfying, and may in certain cases
become acutely oppressive ; while the peculiarly high
standard of truthfulness which has been so diligently
maintained in the Society (and which may, I believe,
be largely traced to this very doctrine) makes those
hereditary members who have not by nature the gift
or faculty of mystical insight feel a peculiar uneasiness
in the practice of methods of worship and traditional
expressions based upon that faculty. Within the last
century there has been a very marked recoil in the
Society at large from what was felt to be too exclusive
a reliance on the doctrine of the Inner Light. There
are, however, at the present time indications of a
tendency, especially among the young, to revert to
the ancient and more specially Quaker view. It
seems, therefore, very desirable that we should de-
liberately consider what is the true meaning and
value of the real Quaker tradition in this matter ;
and how far we should aim at maintaining it.
The Quaker Tradition 43
There can, I think, be no doubt that the mystical
view of things, like the poetic view, is the outcome of
a certain idiosyncrasy. There are born mystics, and
there are people to whom all mystical language is un-
meaning, and on whose lips the very name of mysticism
is a term of reproach. The word of course implies
the existence of a secret ; but it must not be forgotten
that there are secrets of two kinds — artificial and
natural, voluntary and involuntary. A mystery may
be guarded by restrictions deliberately imposed and
maintained with the object of preserving a certain
superiority and claim on the reverence of outsiders,
which might vanish if the secret were disclosed. But
the secret of Quaker mysticism is an open secret. If
it is hidden from some eyes, it is by their own lack of
vision, not by any intentional reticence. The doctrine
of the Light within — the Light of Christ in the heart —
was preached by Friends in the beginning with all
the fervour and freedom of the Gospel with which
they felt it to be identical. The desire of their hearts
was that all eyes might be opened to see it ; the
labour of their lives was to spread the knowledge of
the Light of the World, whose power and kingdom
was within, and whose grace was universal ; the
Light which, while it convinced of sin, also healed
sinners ; which was in us and in all men "the hope of
glory." They sought, in George Fox's language, to
"turn men to their free Teacher, Jesus Christ."
44 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
And the response they met with proved that this
teaching, though to some it might be unmeaning, yet
was deep and simple enough to commend itself to a
great multitude, not of the educated specially, but of
the poor and the struggling and the sorrowful It
must be remembered that in the teaching of the early
Friends the Light was never so presented as to be
taken for merely intellectual light, or for a mere
abstract idea of light "The Lamb was the Light
thereof",; the "light, life, spirit, and grace of Christ"
was set forth with a wealth of expression always
pointing to the Crucified One as the very Fountain of
light and life. It was in His Name that they gathered
the " glorious meetings" of which their records are
full. Their strength was in their recognition of Him
as the Light shining in every heart.
Here is the mystery still ; the open secret which
to some seems foolishness, to others a stumbling-
block. Of this central source of our faith I cannot
at this time say more. What I wish to consider is
the manner in which, from generation to generation,
the tradition has been handed down of our freedom
of access to this inward and Divine teaching, and of
the conditions needed for its discernment. Friends
have still, I believe, a special responsibility as re-
gards Divine guidance, and the quietness and inward-
ness which naturally accompany and encourage belief
in it.
The Quaker Tradition 45
It has often been pointed out that the difference
between the law and the Gospel is the difference
between an external restraint and an internal motive.
The superior power and beauty of a virtue arising
from obedience to inward promptings as compared
with that which results from the restraint of law is
a truism too familiar to be insisted on. That "the
Kingdom of Heaven is within us" is the very key-
note of our Master's teaching. But, like all indis-
pensable metaphors, the words " within " and " with-
out " are capable of many applications, and therefore
liable to many misinterpretations. As regards the
phrase so long valued above all others by Friends,
and which to the outer world has been the very glory
of their profession — " the Light within " or " the Inner
Light " — there has, I think, been even amongst here-
ditary Friends themselves some serious misunder-
standing. There has been a tendency to interpret
"within" as implying a limitation rather than as
assigning a central position. Too often it seems to
be understood as meaning such light as is contained
within "my" or "thy" personal experience, rather
than as the innermost and Central Light, whether of
the individual or of all Life.
In short, the teaching of inwardness seems to
require, to make it either safe or adequate, a recog-
nition, whether express or implicit, of the concentric
structure, not only of human beings but of humanity
46 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
and consciousness. The tendency to regard all ex-
perience as in various degrees central or peripheral,
as radiating from or converging towards a centre, is
I suppose, one of the chief characteristics of the born
mystic. It is, at any rate, the key to such mystical
teaching as that of the early Friends ; and it appears
to me to be the key to most of the problems by which
we are encountered in our endeavour to read the
experience of life in the light of faith. For faith
itself is the faculty by which we are enabled to judge
not by "the appearance" but by the underlying
reality. By " innermost" we mean that which is from
every point of view the deepest or (which is the same
thing) the highest or central truth — the truth which
is to " the appearance" as the centre is to the surface
of a globe. While we look only at the surface of
other lives they often bear the appearance of un-
meaning or cruel tragedies ; those very lives which
seen from within may be full of the peace of heartfelt
consent, converting tragedy into martyrdom, while
tribulation becomes "all joy" in the light of the
central glory. Even short of this spiritual experience
(not so rare as it may appear to those who see only
the surface) there will always be a difference between
the summary impressions of hasty observers and
actual experience as revealed to the penetrative
sympathy of faith ; a difference which, when it has
been a few times brought home to us by inquiry or
The Quaker Tradition 47
by some unsought and unexpected self-revelation,
will make us ever afterwards distrustful of the rash-
ness of judgments merely from without.
This difference between the outer and inner life is
constantly impressed upon those brought up, as
Friends have been, in the continual recognition of the
authority of the " inward monitor," accompanied by
the disuse of all outward rites and forms of devotion,
the place of which amongst us is filled by silence.
To watch "in the stillness" for the inspeaking Voice,
to wait and to feel for the promptings of the Spirit
of truth in one's own heart, in every action to look
with confidence for guidance from above — these and
many such familiar admonitions are the ABC of a
real Quaker education.
That the Voice of the Divine Teacher is to be
heard "within," and that obedience to this inward
teaching is all-sufficient, is no doubt as much a doctrine
as any clause in the creeds ; but it is a doctrine so
all-embracing as to have a tendency to supersede
creeds — not only to discourage their use as formu-
laries, but actually to cause many parents to abstain
from inculcating their contents upon children's minds.
I imagine that, in point of fact, this one article of
belief — tha,t a willing obedience to Divine teaching is
the one path of salvation — has often left but little
room for anything that could be called doctrinal
teaching in the families of Friends. I speak with
48 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
some diffidence on this point, not having myself been
brought up in the Society, and being well aware that
there have been great changes of feeling and con-
viction with regard to the need of " definite teaching."
But that in former times Friends did lay much
greater stress upon the duty of looking for "right
guidance" in comparison with that of holding "sound
doctrine" than was commonly the case in other
religious societies cannot, I think, be doubted. It
has often been made a reproach to Quakerism. To
my own mind it appears to be one of the greatest
claims the Quaker tradition has upon our respect and
gratitude.
For indeed there is nothing in this article of belief
to hinder soundness of doctrine ; it hinders only the
attempt to fix it in forms of words and to stamp these
with finality and necessity. Friends certainly can
never believe that all who do not "keep whole and
undefiled the Catholic faith," as defined in the Athan-
asian Creed, "will perish everlastingly." But this
does not involve the denial of a single article of that
or any other creed. "Words," from which George
Fox sometimes felt it his place to " famish the people,"
are necessarily outward, and therefore of compara-
tively little importance. But the habit of inward
obedience, which can be taught both by words and by
example, is the very life of our spirits ; and inward
obedience may call upon us to accept the correction
The Quaker Tradition 49
of our religious phraseology. In these days of shak-
ing of all that can be shaken those may be thankful
whose faith is not bound to any definite form of words.
There is an obvious danger in laying stress on
that meaning of the word "within" which implies
limitation, so that the idea of a light shining only
within the four walls of our own minds is substituted
for the great truth that Light is in its very nature a
radiating energy ; that the " radiancy Divine" springs
from the very Centre of Life and must ever stream
forth in all directions ; that it is hindered only by
the unresponsiveness of our mysteriously darkened
minds ; and that its blessed office is not only to
reveal but to heal our sins and infirmities. Too often
people have allowed themselves to think of "the
Light within" as an exclusive possession of each
individual, and have so misunderstood the verbal
teaching of obedience to it as to think they were
called on to find instruction in a solitary introspec-
tiveness which but too easily becomes morbid — the
natural result of studying one's own feelings instead
of looking upwards (through the skylight of conscience)
to the very Fountain of pure and passionless illumi-
nation— the Light which lighteth every man — which
being common to all cannot exalt one above another
or lead to dissension or self-sufficiency. This inner-
most Light is in its very nature dominant. The attempt
to increase by it exclusion of that which is without
8. 4
50 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
is suicidal. Dearly as I prize the Quaker tradition
of inwardness, I cannot wonder or be sorry that many
a one has broken away from so dangerous a perversion
of it. Not by the exclusion of lesser lights but by
obedience to the one Supreme Light do we increase
the measure of inward illumination.
If we are to obey this Supreme Light, we must of
course learn to recognize it ; and in order to do so
we must be quiet True inward quietness is not that
which may be produced by shutting out all outward
causes of distraction — a process which when carried
out too severely may but intensify the inward ferment
of the mind, especially in the young. It is rather
a state of stable equilibrium ; resulting from the
resolute seeking first of that which is really primary.
It is not vacancy, but stability ; the steadfastness of
a single purpose. Such a purpose diffuses a certain
repose over the whole mind, and even over outward
surroundings, so that frivolous and trivial distractions
fall away from before it. An outward calm may,
however, favour the growth of such an inward
purpose ; the two things may act and re-act on one
another.
Inwardness and true quietness indeed appear to
be but two aspects of the same thing — of a truly
" centred" life. In the innermost region of life there
is perpetual calm. Perturbations and excitements
belong to the comparatively superficial part of our
The Qudlter Tradition 51
nature. In cleaving to the Centre we cannot but be
still ; to be inwardly still is to be aware of the Centre.
This may be mystical language, unfamiliar to those
to whom it has not occurred that all parts of our
nature are not on one level, and do not respond to
the same plane in our environment ; but it is also the
language of hard common-sense. The Centre means
whatever is most unchangeable, most real, most truly
important. To attach ourselves by preference to
whatever is least liable to change and failure is
obviously the course demanded even by mere pru-
dence. And success in any great aim requires, as
a matter of course, gravity and the calmness of
deliberation.
The quietness of self-control is often the first
step towards spiritual vision. It is perhaps the only
step in that direction to which we can point one
another. " Stand still in the Light," " Stand still and
see the Salvation of God." Notwithstanding all
possible dangers from perversion or exaggeration in
the teaching of quietness, the need for it lies too
deep in human nature to be forgotten while the
search after Truth and the God of Truth holds its
place among us.
Friends in former times have no doubt erred — a
very noble error — in too sternly refusing to give any
place to the seductive delights of the eye and the ear ;
and in too rigidly excluding from their own and their
4—2
52 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
children's lives much that was innocent and beautiful.
Nature and common-sense have been too strong for
the policy of exclusion, and the danger now seems to
be that in the reaction from it we may forget the
supreme and unchanging necessity of a right sub-
ordination. So great and overwhelming has been the
rush of increasing interest and excitement in the
outer life of action, of discovery, of enjoyment and
amusement, that even our religion is in danger of
becoming an outward thing. Philanthropy is good,
and missionary zeal is good; active endeavours to
"extend the Redeemer's Kingdom" are good; but
resolute obedience to the Kingdom of God within
us must come first both in order of time and in
order of importance. It is the central root of
obedience alone which can give to outward activity
any value or beauty. This is the ancient Quaker
principle, and unless we hold firmly to it both in
thought and in action our Society will assuredly
become as salt that has lost its savour.
To make clear the paramount importance and
value of that which is central without disparagement
of that which is outward is to do the greatest possible
service to religion. If the Society of Friends can
open wide its doors, not so much to new members as
to new ideas and new sources of knowledge, without
losing its ancient and deep hold on eternal truth ; if
it can maintain that inward quietness which belongs
The Quaker Tradition 53
inevitably to immediate access to the Divine Presence,
without losing its kinship with all that is human,
it may fill a unique place in the present struggle of
faith.
No doubt one result of the opening of doors and
throwing down of hedges must be the gradual disap-
pearance of the old and well-loved type of exclusive
Quakerism, with its picturesque quaintness, and
perhaps even something of its "holy atmosphere" of
awe and reverence. But we shall hardly stay to sigh
over this if we may but watch the dawn of a yet
truer and more lasting, because more free, more open
and trustful type of reverent holiness ; if, while
"speech, behaviour, and apparel" change like all out-
ward things, the habit of looking for and obeying
Divine guidance becomes more and more firmly
established. How far this habit can be maintained,
together with unrestricted intercourse with those
to whom the very words "Divine guidance" mean
nothing, it is hard to guess. In this as in so many
matters we must choose our path without waiting till
we can foresee whither it will lead us. And assuredly
we can cleave to the imperishable truth of the
Quaker tradition without being bound by all the
passing forms it has developed.
Perhaps the chief help towards fidelity to the
essence of our tradition lies in our manner of worship.
This being based upon silence — freed from rites and
54 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
ceremonies and from clerical direction, repeated in
the daily devotions of the family, and striking the
keynote of private and individual seasons of retire-
ment— has a powerful tendency to achieve and to
diffuse the central calm of entire dependence on God,
Amongst those who have been brought up in the
resultant atmosphere there is certainly observable a
tendency in all things, even in the minutest actions
of daily life, to wait and to watch for guidance from
above. To one who like myself has come into the
Society in mature life, one of the most striking facts
one meets with in doing so is the readiness of Friends
to make way for any intimation of a prompting from
within. In cases in which elsewhere some proposed
course of action would be met by free criticism and
by a discussion of reasons for and against it, the
newcomer is perhaps startled to find that the effect on
Friends is that of a sudden hush — an instinctive pause,
in which the proposal seems to sink out of sight for
a while, and some silent process of weighing and
waiting takes the place of spoken comment. The final
comment, when it does come, has often a ripeness
and a wisdom which fully justify the method of
concentration and upward expectancy by which it
has been arrived at. Especially if any kind of religious
service be in question, there is something surprising,
as well as indescribably comforting, in the readiness of
Friends to fall in with and promote the minutest
The Quaker Tradition 55
fulfilment of the individual vision. And even in all
the trivial arrangements of everyday life this atmo-
sphere of reverent helpfulness seems to pervade the
typical Quaker household. One finds often amongst
Friends a peculiar combination of flexibility and
orderliness, as well as a gentle reserve, which have
their roots in the characteristic tradition of trust in
Divine guidance. The "inward monitor" is listened
to even in the minutest details of ordinary conduct.
Of course there is a shadow side to this beautiful
habit of trust. The traditional teaching of the duty
of looking for " right guidance" has no doubt in some
cases become oppressive and overstrained. Young
people have grown up in an atmosphere of awe
which tended to produce a reaction and a longing
for something more outward and tangible in their
devotions, and in some cases the habitual watch for
guidance has degenerated into superstition. But in
spite of all dangers there is in it a virtue which we
cannot afford to lose.
We need, I think, mainly two things in order to
preserve this virtue of immediate dependence on
Divine teaching from the perversions to which
experience has shown it to be liable. In the first
place, we need to recognize that the Light within is
(as I have tried to point out) central, unbounded,
radiating — that it burns best with open doors — that
while all light is one, that which shines from spirit to
56 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
spirit is the innermost glory of unchangeable Truth,
making manifest the path of holiness, of pureness, of
eternal life. And, secondly, we need to remember
that the guidance for which we can always and
reasonably look directs us not to the fulfilment of
our own desires but to the satisfaction of our spirit's
supreme hope. The One Guide leads to the One
Home ; often through failures and mistakes, but
always upward and heavenward. The work of the
"inward monitor" is to correct, not to explain; so
that to dwell under His teaching is to become
increasingly humble and contrite ; wise with the
wisdom of simplicity ; not necessarily to acquire
any other knowledge than the knowledge, so far as it
concerns ourselves, of His Will. Can we have a
higher aim than so to live that we may, in our
measure, transmit the radiance of this Central Light ?
WHAT DOES SILENCE MEAN?
Mere silence — the silence of the lips — may of
course cover every variety of mental state. We
Friends are so accustomed to the thought of its fitness
to be the " basis" of worship, that I think many of us
fail to ask ourselves why this is so. Even hereditary
Friends (or perhaps these especially) seem sometimes
to misinterpret its real value, and to forget some of its
meanings. It is also often forgotten that the silence
of the lips is but a means to an end, or an eloquent
sign of something deeper. We forget that silence is
not the same thing as stillness; and that the true
test of the value either of words or of silence is
their power to gather into the stillness of true
worship.
First let us consider how far the absence of words
does tend towards this inward stillness, which is at
once the condition and the result of any true acquaint-
ance with God.
58 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
The disuse of prescribed forms of words, the
practical recognition that words are not an essential
part of worship, of course means in the first place
freedom from any necessary temptation to insincerity.
Its value in this respect can perhaps hardly be fully
estimated except by those who have gone through
the struggles of conscience caused by the habitual use
of liturgical forms, along with an ever-growing doubt
how far the prescribed words were true for oneself.
This uneasiness may arise quite apart from anything
that would be called "religious doubt" — apart from
any misgivings as to the truth of creeds or doctrines
— simply in the form of the very obvious question —
Do I at this moment experience the feelings I am
expressing? When I say "there is no health in
us," or that we "lift up our hearts to the Lord," am
I uttering a mere empty form ? or, worse still, am I
trying to induce in myself a purely factitious emotion ?
I know that many truly pious people are entirely
free from these scruples, and feel no hesitation in
repeating, or kneeling while others repeat, such words
as these just as a method of expressing the most
general concurrence in an intention of worship, or as
tending to produce feelings right and suitable in
themselves, and which they think none the worse for
being artificially produced. It is a difficult question
how far such a manner of worship can be legitimate
or justifiable. I do not see how it can fail often to
What does Silence mean? 59
produce in thoughtful minds a sense of insincerity or
at least a sense of something artificial and factitious
in our acts of devotion. It may be urged that the
very object of meeting together for united worship is
to create, or to stimulate if already existing, certain
frames of mind and certain devout affections. It is
a very grave question whether such manipulation of
experience can be right. Friends at any rate have
clearly decided against it. I believe this to be one
of the great services they have rendered to the cause
of sincerity and truth. The supreme need of the
multitude of seekers after God in the present day is
to find some mode of approaching Him which shall
have in it no suspicion of unreality, of self-deception,
or even of bias.
But in these days there are few to whom the use
of liturgical forms can be free from objections of a
yet more serious kind than this want of perfect
consistency with present feeling. The most marked
characteristic of the last half-century is what has been
called the "disintegration of beliefs" — not alone
outspoken doubts as to the truth of the most funda-
mental doctrines of all religion, but the falling to
pieces, so to speak, of systems formerly accepted or
rejected as coherent and organic wholes. Not theo-
logical systems alone, but these chiefly, have undergone
processes of analysis and criticism under new lights,
through which each separate article of any creed has
60 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
been challenged and discussed on its own merits ;
orthodoxy is at a discount, and we ask not whether
any given doctrine is an essential part of Christianity,
but what are the grounds upon which Christians have
considered it to be worthy of belief. Each separate
article of every creed has been so vigorously and so
publicly challenged and discussed that the undisturbed
and unquestioning belief in any kind of orthodoxy can
linger only in very sheltered spots. We have to face
the fact that "the questioning spirit" is rapidly
penetrating into every recess of thought and feeling,
and that in a large proportion of instances the only
reply we can make to its challenge is " We know not,
and we need not know." A confession of ignorance
is being extorted by sincerity from many who used,
or whose parents used, to think that loyalty required
from them the utmost positiveness of conviction.
This state of affairs, whether good or bad, is too
obvious to be disregarded The Church of England
with a very uncertain voice, and the Church of Rome
more peremptorily, meet it by the demand for sub-
mission, and by the claim that the Church is the
Divinely appointed guardian of a body of truth,
which Christians are no more free to dismember than
to reject Friends have always met it by the quiet
confidence that (in the language of George Fox) "God
is come to teach His people Himself" — and that
there is " One who can speak to our condition," and
What does Silence mean? 61
Who, if we yield ourselves to His Spirit, will "lead us
into all truth." The two methods are obviously
incompatible, and as we cleave to the one principle
or to the other, we shall regard the present phase
of thought mainly with fear or mainly with hope.
For my own part I believe it to be mainly good,
because mainly a struggle towards Light — a process
by which Truth must gain in the long run. It is
no doubt a process full of distress and of danger to
individual seekers ; but if our faith be true, if God
be Himself our Teacher and Guide, how can we doubt
that all who seek must find ? how can we fear that
even the blindest wanderings into the wilderness can
deprive any of us of the care of the Good Shepherd ?
Now, while passing through this process of dis-
integration and testing of accepted beliefs, the use of
a liturgy steeped through and through with dogma
may well be intolerable to the honest-hearted, while
yet the need of united worship may be more than
ever felt.
There are, I know, many Friends in these days who
regret the absence of "definite teaching" from our
meetings, and who would shrink from recognizing it
as one of the advantages of our manner of worship
tia&t,just in so far as it is silent, it not only throws
open the door wide to those who are passing through
all degrees of doubt and of agnosticism, but allows
of their sharing in the devotions of others without
62 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
disturbance from well-meaning zeal, or stumbling-
blocks in the form of professions of faith. Here of
course we must recognize that there is a difference of
judgment amongst us as to the need for doctrinal
agreement. If to be of one mind on abstract theo-
logical questions is necessary to our hope of Christian
unity, we may well fly to definite teaching, even at
the risk of repelling some of the troubled spirits
whom we would fain help. But if it be true, as I
most earnestly believe, that our bond of union lies
not at all in coincidence of mere opinion, but in the
following of One Lord, must it not be our desire
before all things to remove every stumbling-block or
cause of offence from the path of those who are
seeking light ? Must we not remember how often the
excess of definite teaching and its proved fallibility
has been the very cause of their revolt ? Do we not
well to be " slow to speak " in the presence of those
who have been wounded by the strife of tongues ?
It is time that we should recognize that agnos-
ticism is not a hostile camp, but a rich recruiting
ground, — that agnostics are not necessarily adversaries
of faith, but often the most earnest seekers after it.
I am of course using the word in what I take to be
its proper, as it is certainly its original, sense ; not as
necessarily implying the denial of the possibility of
any knowledge, but as a disclaimer of special know-
ledge, respecting the Unseen and Eternal. In this
What does Silence mean? 63
sense we surely all are, or ought to be, largely
agnostics — "Christian agnostics," if such be our
happy lot — but still ready and even earnest to con-
fess the imperfection of our knowledge and the dim-
ness of our vision in regions where the learning of the
deepest scholars avails but to show the immensity
and insolubility of the surrounding problems.
Agnostics in this sense are, not less than others,
M athirst for the living God." What they need, what
all of us need, is not an answer to questions, but a
glimpse of the Presence. We may not be able —
perhaps no one would be able — to clear up all their
perplexities. But if in the silence we are truly
worshipping, we may give the only help that can
avail — the sense of the reality of that which all seek
and some have found — of that which seeks all till all
are found. Prayer lies deeper than thought. It is
the only power which can subdue all rebellious
thought, and satisfy all hungry and thirsty thought.
If we did but understand the depth of conscious need
which may exist in the very heart of uncertainty as
to what is lawful as utterance, we should above all
things dread to block up the entrance to our sanctuary
with words and dogmas.
People forget that confident assertion is much
more likely to produce contradiction than conviction.
Years ago a story was told me of the experience of
,one whose casual attendance at a meeting held in
64 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
unbroken silence had led to hia conversion. His
comment was, "If they had said anything I could
have answered them." This vividly describes what
was for some years my own habitual feeling, when
struggling with almost overpowering doubts as to the
truth of Christianity. The words spoken in meetings,
especially those of the most intellectual and cultivated
speakers, often did but revive all my difficulties ; but
the silence — the united stillness — had a subduing and
healing power not to be described. "Words can always
be opposed. You cannot oppose silence ; and few, I
believe, can altogether resist it.
But it is not only on the ground of its being a
peculiarly persuasive form of eloquence that I would
urge the value of silence. It is rather because of its
inherent fitness as a part of the process by which we
acquaint ourselves with God, and become aware of
His Presence in us and amongst us. It means space
for such inward exercises of mind as in most cases
precede and accompany any conscious approach to
the Divine Presence. And here I think we have
often darkened counsel by the repetition of certain
traditional phrases, which apart from their context
become false, such as the expression about the mind
when rightly prepared for the transmission of Divine
messages being like "a sheet of blank paper" — a
comparison very misleading if understood to mean
that the way to obtain Divine illumination is to
What does Silence mean? 06
reduce the human mind to a state of vacancy, but
apt enough if used to suggest the familiar truth that
a reflecting surface must be clean and free from con-
fusing marks if it is to give back clearly the images
presented to it — that in human minds, as in water,
stillness is generally a condition necessary for perfect
clearness.
The inward silence and stillness for the sake of
which we value and practice outward silence is a
very different thing from vacancy. It is rather the
quiescence of a perfectly ordered fullness — a leaving
behind of hurrying outward thoughts and an entering
into the region of central calm. And let us remember
that it is a condition to be resolutely sought for, not
a merely passive state into which we may lapse at
will. In seeking to be still, the first step of necessity
is to exclude all disturbance and commotion from
without; but this is not all, there are inward dis-
turbances and commotions to be subdued with a
strong hand. There is a natural impulse to fly from
the presence of God to a multitude of distractions,
which we must resolutely control if we would taste
the blessedness of conscious nearness to Him. I
believe it often is the case that the way to achieve
this resolute self-control is through thought — through
a deliberate act of attention to our own highest con-
ceptions of the nature and the will of Him with
Whom we have to do. It may be that to achieve
s. 5
66 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
it requires a struggle of the will — a struggle not only
for steady attention but for submission. Many and
sore conflicts may have to be passed through before
we can be gathered into that peace of God which
awaits the humble and contrite soul as it draws near
to Him. It may be that on any given occasion of
worship we can but attain to a sense of our own
poverty and faultiness. The hour spent in an honest
attempt to withdraw from the things of time and to
enter into the sanctuary may leave us not higher but
lower in our own estimation — nearer the truth in-
deed, and nearer in very truth to ultimate victory,
but more and more aware of the distance which
separates us from the haven where we would be.
Many a painful revelation is made to us in these
hours ; many an unwelcome duty opened before us ;
many a secret weakness laid bare. It is indeed true,
as Friends have been accustomed to say, that we can-
not expect "to eat the bread of idleness" in our
silent meetings. Every individual spirit must work
out its own salvation in a living exercise of heart and
mind, an exercise in which "fear and trembling"
must often be our portion, and which cannot possibly
be fully carried out under disturbing influences from
without. Silence is often a stern discipline, a laying
bare of the soul before God, a listening to the "reproof
of life." But the discipline has to be gone through,
the reproof has to be submitted to, before we can
What does Silence mean? 67
find our right place in the temple. Words may help
and silence may help, but the one thing needful is
that the heart should turn to its Maker as the needle
turns to the pole. For this we must be still.
It is sometimes assumed that those who are
concerned for the maintenance of our freedom from
set forms of words, and from any words without
"the anointing," desire silence for the sake of spiri-
tual self-indulgence ; as an opportunity for culti-
vating ecstatic or abnormal emotion. Those who are
zealous for the depth and purity of the worship
"based upon silence," springing out of stillness, are
often supposed to be comparatively indifferent to the
service of mankind, — willing to wrap themselves in
a selfish enjoyment of some kind of mysterious ecstasy
which may be the luxury of the few, but is of no
avail for the regeneration of the many. This notion
that stillness can be advantageous only to a specially
gifted few strikes at the very root of our ideal.
Could any missionary zeal be more ardent than was
that of the early Friends ? any preaching more em-
phatically for all? and was this noble activity in-
compatible with a profound listening " in the stillness"
to the Voice of God, or was it the inevitable outcome
of that listening ? Surely the outcome of it. Surely
all good and acceptable and effectual Christian ac-
tivities do in fact spring from a deep root of listening
obedience, and derive all their value from the spiritual
6—2
68 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
worship which prompts them. Communion with God,
and the supreme love of God, must be the very
fountain of all right outward activity. It is obvious
that the "silence of all flesh" is to be used not for
dreaming, but for entering into the deep things of
truth. The lessons which can be learnt only in
quietness are the deepest lessons we are capable of
learning.
People not accustomed to Friends' manner of
worship often say, "But if you want silence and
quietness, why can't you have it at home and alone ?
why meet with others at all ? " They little know the
help that is to be found in the presence of fellow-
pilgrims and fellow-seekers. A deliberate with-
drawal from the distractions of sense and of words is
no doubt practicable in solitude, and it is to be hoped
that it is in some degree a daily practice with most
of us ; but experience abundantly shows that it is in
the united practice of it that it reaches its greatest
depth. A Friends' meeting, however silent, is at the
very lowest a witness that worship is something other
and deeper than words, and that it is to the unseen
and eternal things that we desire to give the first
place in our lives. And when the meeting, whether
silent or not, is awake, and looking upwards, there is
much more in it than this. In the united stillness of
a truly " gathered" meeting there is a power known
only by experience, and mysterious even when most
What does Silence mean? 69
familiar. There are perhaps few things which more
readily flow "from vessel to vessel" than quietness.
The presence of fellow-worshippers in some gently
penetrating manner reveals to the spirit something
of the nearness of the Divine Presence. " Where two
or three are gathered together in His Name" have
we not again and again felt that the promise was
fulfilled and that the Master Himself was indeed " in
the midst of us" ? And it is out of the depths of
this stillness that there do arise at times spoken
words which, springing from the very source of
prayer, have something of the power of prayer —
something of its quickening and melting and purify-
ing effect. Such words as these have at least as much
power as silence to gather into stillness.
Those who are strangers to our manner of worship
often seem unable to see that there can be any united
worship where there is no joining in the use of the
same words. They do not understand — no one, I
think, could understand without experience — what
harmonies may arise when one thought or one feel-
ing is echoed and re-echoed from mind to mind, each
one contributing its own peculiar note, its own chord
and quality, yet all combining into a fullness and
richness of illuminated experience such as can
belong only to the mingling of many voices at a
moment of entire oneness of spirit, of a true baptism
into one Name and one Power.
70 Thoughts on the Central Radianee
Naturally we cannot speak very freely of the
sacred hours of communion with our God and wil
each other. But, however rare and however impe
fectly realized, we are, I think, bound to place <
record the fact of such possibilities, not only for tl
Bake of making known a great power, but also :
the hope of warning the well-intentioned but wea
in faith not impatiently to intrude on the broodir
stillness with alien matter. Any one who comes to
Friends' meeting bringing with him (in his min<
a ready-made discourse prepared in the differei
atmosphere of his own study, of course risks tl
destruction of the essential condition of truly unite
worship. Either he must abandon his intention an
yield to the influences of the surrounding inner lil
or, if he persists in uttering words unrelated to it, 1
will probably quench sparks which might have bee
fanned to a flame of true prayer. Of all the di
turbing influences from without which hinder tl
consciousness of communion with God, I think th:
unwarranted words — words not freshly called fort
by the united exercise of the moment — are the moi
disturbing; while the words which do arise froi
that exercise — words, however feeble or faltering i
themselves, but vibrating with the reality of a presei
stirring of spirit — may kindle in others a sacre
flame which will spread and gain strength till all ai
once more made aware of their living unity.
What does Silence mean? 71
The stillness which is the first condition of true
worship is also, I believe, its ultimate reward The
fruit of any personal acquaintance with God must be
peace. Any real measure of this knowledge must
necessarily bring calmness, and not only calmness
but power. It is the very root of that quietness and
confidence wherein is our strength.
Our times of united worship should surely be
times when the keynote of our lives should be clearly
sounded, whether by words or without words ; times
which should be as an underlying root of order and
of felt unity through which all our outward daily
activities are harmonized and steadied. If we begin
with the quietness of poverty and of humble de-
pendence, with a resolute withdrawal from the out-
ward and changing surface into the innermost, deepest
chamber of our own hearts, if we do but honestly
strive to be still that we may know Him to be God,
we may end with a sense, not I believe otherwise
attainable, of the clear shining of tranquillizing light ;
we may come to know the deeper and more blissful
stillness which is the result of entire self-surrender —
the stillness for which we have not striven, which
we could not beforehand have imagined, the stillness
of a life firmly rooted in the Divine life, ever radiating,
ever fruitful, without disturbance or disorder — a
stillness full of Divine harmonies, and satisfying every
72 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
faculty of mind and soul and spirit — the peace of
God which passeth all understanding.
I cannot refrain from reminding Friends of these
truths, once so familiar, and so deeply important for
the healing of many spirits in our hungry and thirsty
generation. But sincerity compels me to add that
I am speaking of that of which my own experience is
very imperfect, though real as far as it goes. It is
that to which I am learning with increasing steadiness
to look as to the very path of life. In looking over
George Fox's epistles I am deeply impressed by the
reiteration of his exhortations to stillness — to "waiting
in the light " — a thing which he evidently felt to be
more or less within the power of voluntary effort.
And in watching what is going on around us in every-
day life, in reading the literature of the day, whether
light or grave, I feel that on all sides the need of a
resolute stillness becomes more and more urgent.
Partly because so many of our modern conditions
make it increasingly difficult of attainment, but far
more because of the very critical nature of the present
moment in the history of our religious development.
We are engaged, whether we like it or not, in a
reconsideration and gradual correction and restate-
ment of all our deepest beliefs, for we are learning,
What does Silence mean? 73
I trust, to put Truth before orthodoxy. For this very
awful but quite necessary process of correction, we
need above all things the spirit of reverence and
patience — we need deep and grave thought, as in the
sight of God. For all these things quietness is
essential.
THE DOOR OF THE SANCTUARY1.
" Then thought I to understand this, but it was too hard for
me, until I went into the Sanctuary of God..."
" Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and shut the
door...."
It is, I believe, in very various degrees that people
recognize the distinction between the inner and the
outer life. To many people I know that the language
arising from a vivid sense of that difference — the
language of mysticism — seems to be unmeaning. To
such, all topics appear to be on one level, and to be
amenable to one standard — the standard probably of
common-sense, whether "sanctified" or otherwise.
Or perhaps a more frequent state of mind is that in
which the distinction between inward and outward
is at times vaguely felt, but has never been distinctly
recognized, and is not habitually dwelt upon. One
thing is certain — namely, that all those who do
habitually make the distinction mean by it the same
1 A paper read to the St Paul's Association, Cambridge.
The Door of the Sanctuary 75
thing. They all agree in regarding as "inward" the
more permanent and important elements of our life —
the " things unseen and eternal " — and in the feeling
that these unchanging inner realities must dominate
the outward; that the inward is that from which
alone the outward draws any beauty or value or
significance ; that in case of incompatibility be-
tween the two, the lightest of inward and spiritual
objects must outweigh all outward attraction or
repulsion ; that the heart being fixed, we need not
fear what flesh can do to us. Without doubt, " the
Kingdom of Heaven is within us."
It is to myself impossible not to look at human
nature, and indeed at everything else, as consisting
of concentric layers. I have been glad to find that
some ancient Indian philosopher — perhaps more than
one — had taught this doctrine of what I have been
accustomed to call "the coats of the onion." I think
he enumerated seven or eight such coats. I have
habitually thought of them as mainly three, — the
outermost, the intermediate, and the innermost
regions of our being. For our present purpose, the
outermost layer of the merely material or trivial, and
the intermediate layer of the affections need not
be distinguished. Enough if we keep in mind the
simpler division into inward and outward — the familiar
antithesis of the seen and temporal and the unseen
and eternal.
76 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
In the growing recognition of this concentric
structure of life, I seem to myself to find the key to
many apparent contradictions and incompatibilities.
That which seen from without appears like a blind
and miserable chance, may when seen from within
take its place as a necessary link in a chain of events
glowing with beauty and significance. That which
from without looks like a crushing fate may as seen
from within be the consummation of a drama not the
less beautiful because partaking of the nature of
tragedy. At the heart of the deepest sorrow lies a
joy unknown to lookers on, unless a blessed experience
of the innermost has prepared them to penetrate its
mystery. There seems no end to the revelations
resulting from the power of faith to pass beyond the
visible. Faith knows the open secret — the secret of
Jesus — the joy of conscious oneness with the Father.
Faith is that which opens to us the door of the
Sanctuary, and abides in the innermost, the central,
region of light and love.
But a living faith must radiate. I suppose no one
can be conscious of possessing any such faith, even as
a grain of mustard seed, without at least desiring to
share it with others. And here for most of us begins
a phase of difficulty, and even of risk, of which we
may through life be painfully conscious. The sense
of failure to share our treasure may even seem to us
to cast a doubt on the reality of our possession ; and
The Door of the Scmctuwy 77
may, — perhaps rightly — challenge our claim to any
true discipleship. To find ourselves dumb where we
ought to be eloquent may be a cause of standing
discouragement.
There are in fact two main currents of feeling
with regard to our religious life which it is not always
easy to harmonize and combine.
On the one hand we must all feel that union with
God is the very root, or fountain, of union with each
other — that as His children we are " gathered together
in one" — made one in the Beloved Son in whom He
is well pleased ; that God is no respecter of persons,
and that in drawing near to Him we cannot but leave
behind all personal and separating feelings — being
made aware of our share in the common " inheritance
of the saints in light," and feeling of necessity the
impulse to share, to show forth, to radiate, which is
the very mark of the fruitful life of the spirit.
On the other hand it is, I suppose, an equally
universal feeling that the deeper and the more precious
any experience, the less ready we must be to talk
about it, or to attempt to utter it. A natural instinct
of modesty and reverence seals our lips with regard
to our most sacred possessions, and restrains us
from rashly approaching the corresponding hidden
treasures of other minds. " He is in Heaven and thou
upon earth, therefore let thy words be few" is the
keynote of a very real and right feeling with regard
78 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
to those "best things" which we vaguely call
religion.
There are, I suppose, simple souls to whom none
of these scruples and difficulties occur — whose song
of praise rises uninterruptedly and unwaveringly
from a childlike heart, and on whose lips the words
of eternal life are but the natural overflowing of the
well of living waters springing up within. For these
simple-hearted ones — that is, for the deepest and
truest hearts — it may be far oftener possible to share
with others their inmost treasure than it is for most
of us, with our complicated susceptibilities and
consciousnesses. But these very susceptibilities may
have their use. If we cannot all rise to the level of
that true simplicity which belongs especially to the
pure in heart, we may sometimes find that our very
difficulties have qualified us to be specially helpful
to fellow-pilgrims on our own lower level
It is on this ground that I venture to offer what
follows as to the chief difficulties besetting those
whose snare is too much reserve rather than too
much readiness to speak on the deepest matters.
And here I must say that I believe there are some
whose silence is as simple and natural, and as little a
cause of discouragement or perplexity to themselves
or of injury to others, as is the childlike outspokenness
of simplicity to the happy souls to whom it belongs.
Those who feel their own dumbness a reproach or an
The Door of the Scmcttmry 79
embarrassment are of course people in whom both
impulses exist and are not yet fully harmonized
We are not all fully conscious of the distinction
between the inner and outer layers of our own lives,
or those of others, nor do we all possess in equal
degree the faculty of passing at will from one to the
other. For want of a clear sense of the difference
and the harmony between inward and outward — of
what I believe we may call the mystical sense — much
of what we hear about the religious life seems to
many of us to be out of tune. People often seem
to forget that language appropriate to one plane or
level of life may be quite misleading when under-
stood of the other. In the use of parables, where
the inner reality is wrapped up in and conveyed by
means of outer realities, both the distinction and the
harmony between inward and outward are of course
preserved and even emphasized. Our Lord's own
example shows the wonderful power of this method
of conveying the things of the kingdom without
profaning them ; so that while those who have ears
to hear receive them in a form deeper and more
effectual than that of any mere verbal proposition,
those who are not ripe for them may in hearing hear
and not understand. Figures of speech while con-
veying the most expose the least, — they preserve the
sanctity, the fullness, and the mystery of the words
of eternal life. Figurative language, the language
80 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
of poetry, is certainly that which comes nearest to
uttering the unutterable — towards telling the open
secret. But we have not all the gift of poetic, any
more than of mystical, speech. And we may well
shrink from the attempt to describe in familiar prose
experiences for which poetry itself is not adequate.
My own feeling is that words belong to the out-
ward, and that in the innermost depths of our being
— in the sanctuary of God — words are of necessity
left behind. Words cannot utter the Light, though
they may tell of it. If anything can be shared in
this region it will be not by words, but by a living
radiance. As we approach the Holy Place, therefore,
we may well be silent, letting the Light shine without
words into our hearts, if so be that our light also
may in its turn quietly shine before men.
But there is a further hindrance to much speaking
of the things of the Spirit. All of us have, I suppose,
some power — though we have it in very unequal
degrees, — of discerning this innermost Light. But
even in those who possess it in the highest degree,
the faculty of spiritual vision would seem to be of
necessity intermittent.
I think we may safely say that almost all the
saints of whose lives we have any records seem to
have known alternations of light and darkness ; of
rejoicing in, and mourning the loss of, that sense of
the Presence of God which is their heaven. Some-
The Door of the Sanctuary 81
times of course the periods of eclipse are, or appear
to the subject of them to be, the result of unfaithful-
ness; and the bitterness of self-reproach may then be
the worst part of the darkness.
Yet the fact of intermittence seems to be in itself
not only innocent but inevitable ; and, like all other
inevitable conditions, capable of contributing to our
highest welfare. I believe that in the Divine hus-
bandry the alternations of day and night, summer and
winter, are not only needful but even in some degree
intelligible, conditions of fruitfulness. If such alter-
nations haveformed a part of our own inner experience,
— and I suppose few of us are quite without them,
though they seem to be much more marked in some
lives than in others — we must know that there are
quite involuntary, and therefore blameless, changes
of mental temperature and atmosphere which tend to
produce them. The darkness may have in it no sense
of condemnation. It may be a mere mental blindness,
whether temporary or permanent. How painful a
deprivation such blindness may be, even apart from
the self-reproach it is so apt to arouse, those only can
know whose sight has at times been blessed by the
radiance "which evermore makes all things new" —
in which even what must remain mysterious is illumi-
nated by the very sunshine of Eternity.
But such darkness is not merely a privation while
it lasts. It too often shakes our belief in that which
82 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
the light seemed to have revealed to us. We are
tempted to regard the successive aspects of our life
as mutually contradictory ; and are ready to give up
the hope of returning sunshine. Very naturally such
a sense of the instability and uncertainty of our own
inward experience tends to seal our lips. Not only
we cannot to-day give yesterday's message, but we
begin to doubt whether we had a message yesterday
— perhaps whether there can be such things as
messages from above at all.
For we all feel, and I hope and believe that we
are learning increasingly to feel, that our one great
need is reality — that our words can help others only
if, and so far as, we ourselves have first-hand ex-
perience of the things of which we speak. There-
fore many of us must face the question whether the
intermittent character of our religious experience
does indeed disprove its reality ; and this is a question
not to be lightly answered. On the face of it, inter-
mittence does, no doubt, wear an appearance of
change and instability. But we must distinguish.
There are things whose very nature is to intermit.
I am inclined to think that emotions, and especially
religious emotions, are among them. Certainly all
intercourse of mind with mind must be intermittent
The important question would seem to be whether
the intermittent gleams of heavenly light recur ; and
if so, whether their tendency and direction are stead-
The Door of the ScmclMMry 83
fast; pointing to an underlying constancy which
may even be emphasized by superficial fluctuations.
Intermittence seems to belong to the human and
personal side of religion — to the individual experience
of lovingkindness without which our knowledge of
the unseen would be but a study of the general laws
of the universe. Human intercourse depends as
much upon silence as upon words. We could not
learn to speak or to understand speech from listening
to a quite continuous sound. I doubt whether we
could ever have a true sense of hearing the word of
the Lord if there were no pauses in that which
impresses us as His speech. There is a tenderness
in the occasional impression which we do not feel in
the awful uniformity of law. The contrast between
general and unchangeable truth on the one hand, and
on the other the personal touch of a Fatherly bene-
diction, seems to me to be wonderfully expressed in
those words of the prophet, "His goings forth are
prepared as the morning, and He shall come unto us
as the early and latter rain upon the earth." Were
all his dealings with us as uniform as the goings
forth of the sun in heaven, we could scarcely feel that
he was speaking to us individually ; but when He
touches us as gently and as varyingly as the early and
the latter rain touch the earth, then indeed we can-
not but feel that the finger of God is come unto us.
It would seem as if the development of a human spirit
fr-2
84 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
needed every variety of mental season ; as if the
language of the inspealdng Voice must be a language
of separate phrases, — often repeated, rising and fall-
ing, emphasized by pauses ; coming to us as the early
and latter rain upon the earth ; not in a continuous
torrent, but gently penetrating, — and pausing — and
penetrating again. We have to learn to listen and
to wait, as well as to speak.
That Eternal sunshine which we know by occa-
sional glimpses belongs of course to the innermost
region of our being, and the central region of all
being — to that which is spiritual — to the Sanctuary.
But the very words of our Master which I began by
quoting seem to show that this is not a region in
which, in this life at least, we can consciously abide
always. The very injunction to enter into our closet
and shut the door, the very words " when thou pray-
est," seem to show that He is speaking not of our
habitual consciousness ; not of any mental attitude
which can be maintained "without ceasing," but
of something necessarily occasional — of isolated acts
of worship. Such times are as peaks catching the
sunshine while the level lands are wrapped in mist —
mounts of transfiguration on which we are not yet
permitted to set up our tabernacles.
It is, I believe, the same not only with acts of
worship, but with all our moments of inspiration and
revelation — our glimpses of the blessed Vision. They
The Door of the Samtuary 85
come and go — we can neither command them nor
retain them. Well for us if we do not pass from
them into those darkest abysses of which we find such
frequent mention in the lives of the saints.
Enter into thy closet and shut the door. Ex-
perience, even a slight and fragmentary experience,
of that innermost chamber and its revelations makes
us all feel the need of shutting the door — that we
may be alone with the Alone — that we may dwell for
a time in the undisturbed sense of His Presence, and
yield ourselves wholly to its sacred influence. But
as we pass outwards into the common daylight we
are, as I have said, confronted with the awful question,
Are these things realities or dreams ? That which we
saw daring the blessed moments spent in the Sanc-
tuary of God, is it a mere visionary appearance to be
left behind, or is it a revelation of hidden depths
permanently underlying, and having the right to
dominate, all our outer life?
Such questions can, I believe, be fully answered
only by the practical process of allowing our lives to
be governed by all the light we have. Meanwhile
one great test of the value of any passing gleams
must lie in observing whether they do in fact recur,
and whether in their recurrence they always point in
the same direction. What we really believe is not
what we may think we see to-day or to-morrow, but
that to which our mind returns again and again in its
86 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
most undisturbed moments, with a growing force of
conviction, and a growing power of adjusting to these
convictions the passing elements of our outward life.
There is perhaps another reason why those of us
whose religious experience is of an intermittent and
perhaps perplexing character may shrink from ap-
pealing to it as of any value to others. The very
act of speaking of the things of the kingdom implies
a certain claim to be a subject of that kingdom. We
have been accustomed so closely to associate the
ideas of piety and of holiness, that some of us feel at
times a scruple about making any confession of faith,
lest it should seem to be a profession of sanctity.
I believe we are very gradually learning to dis-
tinguish between these two things. Most of us have
had to recognize that it is possible to have some
real religion without being altogether true and con-
sistent— and many of us have learnt, or are still
learning, with a mixture perhaps of thankful ad-
miration and of perplexity, how very good it is possible
for some to be without holding any of those doctrines
which we have sometimes been taught to consider as
inseparable from a pure morality. Without plunging
into the depths of this problem, I may say that I
believe we need not really, if we are honest, allow
ourselves to be put to silence by the fear of appearing
to claim any degree of holiness. God makes His sun
to shine on the just and the unjust; and the Sun
The Door of the Sanctuary 87
of Righteousness shines as brightly on the lowest and
most imperfect as on the highest and best of human
beings. If indeed we have, however slightly and
intermittently, yet really, felt the healing in His
wings, we cannot be wrong in letting others know,
if occasion serves, that the fact is so. It is true that
the desire to share one's treasure, to help and not to
hinder, does at times seem to lead to a putting for-
ward of one's best, which is perilously akin to in-
sincerity. But it goes without saying that one need
not be insincere.
Can we do anything to lessen the fragmentariness
of our religious experience — in other words, to main-
tain or increase our habitual sense of the Presence
of God?
As I have already said, I believe it to be a Divine
ordinance that this sense should be in some degree
intermittent — but I also believe that with most of us
the intermissions are more frequent and more total
than they need be. We may, I believe, have too
much of any kind of emotion. We can hardly have
too much steadfastness.
The chief of all the means by which God makes
His Presence felt in our hearts is assuredly trouble.
" When I was in trouble I called on the Lord and He
heard me'' must I suppose be for all time the ex-
perience of humanity. "Unto the upright there
ariseth light in the darkness." As the stars are to
88 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
be seen by day from the bottom of a well, so are the
heights of bliss to be known from the depths of
tribulation. This is an undoubted fact of experience,
to which we have an incessant witness all through
Scripture ; and which perhaps most of us have learnt
in our measure by our own personal experience.
Sometimes, it is true (and this to many of us is one of
the bitterest parts of sorrow), our trouble while it
lasts does but make us feel bad in every sense —
weary, perplexed, disturbed, perhaps even rebellious.
It is as the Apostle says " afterwards" only that we
can begin to understand what it has done for us.
Still, in our trouble, however hateful to ourselves
may be our state of mind, we do almost perforce call
upon the Lord, and He does hear us. There are
times in our lives when, partly through trouble and
partly through questioning, the very power to pray
may seem to have deserted us. Yet the dumb and
perhaps involuntary appeal for help — the mere daily
and hourly uplifting of our troubles and anxieties
into the Father's hands — may be met by such daily
and hourly solutions and deliverances as to give us a
completely fresh sense of the meaning and value of
prayer ; perhaps not only restoring but permanently
enlarging our ability to pray. The mere flying to
Him for refuge may have in it a reality not always to
be found in our more deliberate acts of devotion.
Trouble, I am sure, is the great Guide to the
The Door of the Sanctuary 89
Sanctuary. But the teaching of trouble is what we
cannot provide for ourselves. The Father alone
knows when and how to apply that discipline.
But there are some means which we may de-
liberately take towards a more habitual acquaintance
with that place of true inward worship which we call
the Sanctuary. The chief of the favourable con-
ditions, which we have it more or less in our power
to secure for ourselves, is, I believe, a resolute quiet-
ness. And this, I suppose, is what is chiefly meant
by our Lord's injunction to "shut the door." We
need appointed and carefully guarded times in which
to withdraw from all outward things, from all dis-
traction and disturbance and interruption, that we
may dwell for a time beyond their reach — watching
imto prayer.
I know that however easy it may be to secure
outward quietness, and to shut the door of our brick
and mortar sanctuary — however great may be the
help of this outward and sensible withdrawal into a
time and place set apart for devotion — it is by no
means equally easy to achieve a true inward retire-
ment into the Sanctuary of God Here I think we
must not try to follow each other's experience. I am
sure that we must not try to make rules or a pattern
for the experience of others. It is clear that indi-
viduals are very variously affected by any particular
mode of devotion. But I think all will agree that
90 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
quietness is both a necessary condition and a blessed
result of any true worship, and that the daily habit
of seeking it for this end can hardly fail to have a
strengthening and calming effect upon our minds, and
to stamp on them some abiding sense of the Presence
of God.
Lastly, we may endeavour to keep clear the path
to the Sanctuary by " dwelling deep." It is increas-
ingly recognized that we have some power — though
a power varying very much from one individual to
another — of passing voluntarily from one plane, or
one layer, of our life to the other ; and this power, so
far as it is natural and wholesome, may like other
powers be increased by practice.
I say so far as it is natural and wholesome ; for
I wish to make it clear that I am not referring to
anything in the nature of trance or ecstasy. I mean
by the deeper plane the region of the ethical and
spiritual — the unseen and eternal — the region of
" great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to
the end." I mean the innermost layer in that con-
centric structure of life of which I have spoken. We
certainly cannot dwell permanently on the heights
or in the depths, but we can dwell permanently in
view of them. We can cultivate the habit of looking
towards them and recognizing their existence. We
can make a practice of judging events and characters
as far as may be from within ; with reference to the
The Door of the Somcbuary 91
Divine and eternal standards, not to the superficial
"appearance." The outer regions of life, even its,
most trivial and transient interests, have their place
and function. Both as affording links with our fellow-
creatures, and as tending to preserve sanity and
balance of mind, it seems essential that they should
not be disregarded ; but their use and beauty will
gain, not lose, by their being steadfastly subordinated
to that which is really deeper and of more lasting
value.
It is in the personal or individual "part of our
experience that we are disturbed by intermissions
and that we have need of words. I believe that
neither words nor variations have any place in the
innermost Sanctuary. Words are the natural vehicles
of the trifles light as air which belong to our outer-
most region or atmosphere, and they are necessary
weapons and precious links in the stormy and beautiful
intermediate region of the affections. But the deeper
we go the fewer will be our words, and the less will
any need of them be felt. As we enter the innermost
chamber of our own hearts, words, and it may be even
thoughts, are left behind. In the innermost Sanctuary
itself nothing is known but the Light. Those who
are permitted to dwell much in that Light of Life
become suffused with a radiance more powerful than
words to convey to others the knowledge of the
place from whence cometh our help. Where that
92 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
radiance is, words and silence are alike living and
blessed.
Then is it possible that we should not desire to
dwell continually in the inner chamber from whence
the rays of the Sun of Righteousness are seen to issue ?
It is not for us, whose experience of these deepest
joys is but fragmentary and limited, to say what may
be the possibilities of those who not only are called,
but have from the beginning steadfastly obeyed the
call, to be saints. It may be that there are those
whose daily and hourly abode has been consciously
"under the shadow of the Almighty" — who, having
made " the Lord who is our Refuge their habitation,"
need nevermore go out. Some I have known of whom
this appeared to be true. Yet even for these there
must, I think, be different levels — even for them the
Mount of transfiguration is rather to be visited than
taken as a settled abode. And for most of us the
Door of the Sanctuary must probably continue to
open and shut. If this be our present portion let us
not complain of it. Only let us not forget the Light
if it should at times be hidden from our eyes. The
intervals of darkness or twilight may become shorter,
the gloom less unmitigated, as we go forward towards
the River. It is experience, and repeated experience,
of central truth and reality that transfigures life.
The unchangeable realities do not depend for their
continuance on our unbroken attention to them ; and
The Door of the Sanctuary 93
"tasks in hours of insight willed may be through
hours of gloom fulfilled." Let us above all things
keep the visions we have seen, and "ponder them in
our hearts." We can never look at life with the same
eyes when once we have been permitted a glimpse
into its underlying central glow of Light and Love.
The glory may fade from our sight, but we have seen
it. Again and again we shall return to the innermost
chamber and shut the door. Again and again we
shall find that in that quiet and holy place the
crooked things are made straight and the rough
places plain ; and that a light will shine, sometimes
more and sometimes less fully and clearly, but always
enough to show us the next step in the upward path.
As the practice of withdrawing from all passing things
into the Sanctuary becomes confirmed, this experience,
to which as to a loadstone we must return again and
again, will become the keynote of life. All that is
outside it will be subdued into harmony with it.
That which seems to contradict it will be seen to be
mere shadow. The shadows will flee away. All that
is outward changes and passes. " Thy soul and God
stand sure."
WAR AND SUPERFLUITIES.
From the earliest times of our Society its members
have borne their testimony against War and against
Superfluities. These two testimonies have an essential
connection, the nature of which has been clearly
brought out by John Woolman, especially in his
" Word of Remembrance and Caution to the Rich1."
" Where," says he, " that spirit works which loves
riches, and, in its working, gathers wealth and cleaves
to customs which have their root in self-pleasing ;
and whatever name it hath, it still desires to defend
the treasures thus gotten ; — this is like a chain where
the end of one link encloses the end of the other ;
the rising up of a desire to obtain wealth is the
beginning : this desire, being cherished, moves to
action, and riches thus gotten please self ; and while
self has a life in them, it desires to have them defended.
Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains
1 Journal and Works of John Woolman. Dublin, 1794,
p. 455.
War and Superfluities 95
and proceedings contrary to universal righteousness
are supported ; and here oppression, carried on with
worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name
of justice, and becomes like a seed of discord in the
soul ; and as a spirit which wanders from the pure
habitation prevails, so the seeds of war swell and
sprout, and grow, and become strong, until much fruit
is ripened.
"Thus cometh the harvest spoken of by the
prophet, which 'is a heap, in the day of grief and
desperate sorrows.' Oh ! that we, who declare against
wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only,
may walk in the light, and therein examine our
foundation and motives in holding great estates!
May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture
of our houses, and the garments in which we array
ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have
nourishment in these our possessions, or not. Holding
treasures in the self-pleasing spirit is a strong plant,
the fruit whereof ripens fast."
Every conscience will surely bear witness to the
truth of this warning that luxury is the seed of war
and of oppression ; the earnest desire " to be dis-
entangled from everything connected with selfish
customs," must find an echo in every Christian heart.
But what is luxury? we shall be asked: and how
can we be so disentangled from it, as to be clear of
96 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
the reproach of the misery which goes along with it ?
The problem is essentially a practical one, and the
answer will be found by those, and only by those, who
honestly desire to work it out in their own lives.
When we speak of the duty of renouncing super-
fluities, we are certain to be met with the objections
that it is impossible really to draw a line between
superfluities and necessaries ; that, in fact, what are
superfluities to some are necessaries to others ; and
that if we made it our object to pare down our way of
living to the very utmost, we should have to become
mere hermits, and to sacrifice to the achievement
many of the good and useful purposes of life.
From these obvious and undeniable truths, many
people, in our time and country, come to the con-
clusion that there is no sense or meaning in the idea
of renouncing superfluities, and that what we cannot
theoretically and precisely limit we may unlimitedly
indulge. But the Christian instinct goes deeper than
this. With or without a completely satisfactory
theory, it is matter of familiar observation that
Christians do, in proportion to the depth and fervour
of their religion, experience a tendency to abandon
the use of many things formerly enjoyed, and in
themselves innocent In spite of all difficulty as to
boundary lines, and of all opposition from within and
from without, there is in fervent Christianity a
radical incompatibility with self-indulgence. There
War and Superfluities 97
is a rising tide which lifts those who boldly launch
out into the Christian life above many things to
which they have formerly clung, and changes the
current of their desires. Lower pleasures pale and
fade before the Dayspring from on high, and pilgrims
going to the Celestial City must needs leave behind
them much of this world's treasure. Many things
which to those whose horizon is bounded by this life
seem necessaries become manifest impediments in
running that race of which the prize is the inheritance
of the saints in light.
In truth, the answer to all difficulties about
renouncing superfluities lies in the fact that the
expression is obviously relative. When we speak of
rejecting " superfluities," we do not mean that every-
thing should be laid aside without which it is possible
to exist ; but that life should be freed from whatever
is superfluous (i.e. not conducive) to its real object.
The necessity of a winnowing away of superfluities in
this sense is recognised in every art. We say of a
well trained athlete that he "has not a superfluous
ounce of flesh" ; a painter knows that the purity of
his colouring depends upon his not laying on a single
superfluous tint ; the first condition of good writing
is not to use a superfluous word. And Christians, as
" pilgrims and strangers," should not encumber them-
selves with a single superfluous burden ; that is, with
any possession or pursuit which does not in some true
s. 7
98 Thoughts on the Centred Radiance
sense promote their great aim — the glory of God in
the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards
men.
It is perfectly true that we can lay down no
precise or invariable rule as to what things are
superfluous to the Christian life, any more than we
can give rules as to what is superfluous in art or
literature. But none the less is the principle clear.
Whatever does not help, hinders. " He that gather-
eth not with Me, scattereth." In this world, as we
are continually finding out in all directions, nothing
stands alone — nothing fails to produce some effect.
Whatever adds nothing to the general harmony
weakens it. Upon each one of us lies the respon-
sibility of distinguishing in our own case between the
weapon or the armour necessary for our warfare, and
the burden which is but an encumbrance. We cannot
make rules for each other, but we can, if we will, bring
all our own habits and possessions to this one test —
Do they invigorate us in body and mind ? Do they
increase in ourselves, and in others concerned in
them, the power to bless and to do good ? Do they
really feed the flame of Divine love in us, or do they
clog, choke, and impede it ?
Seen in this light, there is in the idea of re-
nouncing superfluities nothing niggardly, rigid, or
artificial To get rid of encumbrances is not, from
this point of view, more important than to use
War and Superfluities 99
liberally whatever does really serve the great purpose
of our life. We are not recommending an arbitrary
or selfish asceticism, but recognising the inevitable
result of engaging heart and soul in the Christian
warfare. The spirit lusteth against the flesh now, as
in the days of the Apostles ; there is, and always
while we are in this world must be, a strife between
the inward and the outward, the permanent and the
transitory. We cannot get or keep hold of that which
is unchangeable without letting go what is perishable,
for no man can serve two masters.
And we are not called upon to limit the freedom
of others in this respect. For it is most true that
what is a superfluity to one is a necessary to another.
Our natural characters and physical and mental
conditions make some far more dependent than
others upon outward help and comfort. It would be
idle to propose one rule for old and young, sick and
well ; and equally idle, and worse than idle, to wish
the scholar and the artist, the preacher and the
merchant, to mould their outward lives on the same
pattern. The surroundings which are needed to keep
a highly educated man or woman in full health of
mind and spirits, would be thrown away upon an
agricultural labourer. Endless diversity seems to be
as much the glory of the kingdom of heaven as of the
animal and vegetable kingdoms.
Some again are providentially called to administer
7—2
100 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
a larger outward domain than others, and these, of
course, may require for their peculiar service a
comparatively complicated and extensive machinery.
Without corresponding experience, it would indeed
be an impertinence to attempt to judge what parti-
cular things may, in such cases, be the mere necessaries
of life ; parts of the indispensable machinery of life
on a large scale. But the principle of eliminating
whatever is useless and burdensome is, obviously,
quite as applicable (if not even more urgent in its
application) to life on a large as on a small scale1.
There is lastly a great variety of experience in
this matter, depending upon our various stages of
spiritual growth. What is necessary to the child is
superfluous to the man. In this sense, superfluities
may be said to be the things which we outgrow, —
things, perhaps, which have served a very useful
purpose in their season, which may even have been
necessary for the full development of our spiritual
life, — but which, like a husk or egg-shell, would
1 I may, perhaps, here venture to suggest that the whole
question of domestic service seems to me to need, in this view,
very thorough consideration, and a large measure of reformation.
The hiring of a greater number of servants than we really need
(involving, as it must, either the maintenance of a number of
people in idleness, or the laying upon some of them much labour
for things which do not really profit any human being, or most
likely combining both these evils), seems to me to be one of the
most prolific of the weeds which over-run and choke our domestic
life.
Wa/r cmd Suuperflmties 101
inevitably cramp it unless thrown aside at the right
time. Without undervaluing or condemning any of
these helps to our infancy, we may yet rejoice as we
perceive ourselves to be outgrowing them. What
was necessary has become superfluous. What is this
but the growth of independence? No doubt all
growth must be gradual. No doubt it is wisest to be
very patient with ourselves and others, and not to
hurry any process of development, lest we sacrifice
vigour to precocity. But if we are really growing, it
is impossible that we should not outgrow many
things in which we formerly delighted, and in which
we can still rejoice to see others innocently delighting.
Every high aim demands the laying aside of lesser
pursuits ; the highest aim of all will assuredly not be
less exacting. As we advance in singleness of eye
and devotedness to the service of our Master, we
shall inevitably find ourselves parting company with
many of the objects which formerly occupied us.
But we may rejoice in such evidence of our growing
hold upon the unseen and eternal, without desiring
to deprive those who still lean upon what is seen and
temporal of any real prop.
The service rendered to the cause of peace on
earth by the winnowing and sifting away of super-
fluities is twofold.
In the first place, it is an increase of spiritual
vigour. To have our lives severely and increasingly
102 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
purged from all clogging and impeding luxury, is
to go from strength to strength ; to become more
serviceable and valiant soldiers of the Prince of Peace.
For not only does growing strength and independence
convert many former necessaries into superfluities,
but resolution in freeing ourselves from what is un-
profitable reacts with bracing effect upon the mind.
It must be remembered that it is not only with regard
to expense that things may be superfluous. In the
service of Christ not only money but time is redeemed
from waste. Plainness and simplicity of living set us
free from superfluous interests and occupations as
much as from superfluous possessions ; and the de-
liverance is even a greater one. Indeed it is obvious
that the chief evil resulting from superfluous posses-
sions is that they occupy time and strength in things
not conducive to the real object of our lives.
Greatest of all is the deliverance from waste of
feeling which is effected when, and in proportion as,
we learn strenuously to "labour for that which
endureth"; when life assumes its true character
of a race, a pilgrimage, a warfare ; when we have
learnt to recognise the importance of laying aside
every weight, as well as every sin, knowing that our
path is ever upwards. Thus in all directions we find
that we must be freed from what is superfluous if
we are to live with our loins girded and our lamps
burning.
War and Superfluities 103
And, in the second place, to disentangle ourselves
from superfluities is to overcome and to defy in our
own persons that spirit of greediness which is (to
use John Woolman's profoundly significant language)
"the seed of war" and of oppression. If it is too
much to say that there is no other cause of quarrel-
ling amongst nations or individuals, we may, at any
rate, safely assert that a very large proportion of all
disputes can be traced to selfish claims and desires
on one side, if not on both. If no one desired either
to get or to keep more than his share of the good
things of this life, how much occasion of war would
be left? How many wars are there which can be
shown to be in their origin and course purely dis-
interested1 ? And can we be doing our part towards
extinguishing the greedy spirit which leads to war,
while we ourselves are clinging to, and nourishing a
love of, all manner of expensive luxuries ?
Any testimony against war (or, indeed, against
any other evil) is apt to be respected just in proportion
to its manifest disinterestedness.
1 It is, I believe, well known that in our day the panics which
tend so much to bring on wars, and to keep up the now universal
enormous armaments (which in their wastefulness and in the
immorality they lead to, are, perhaps, even greater evils than
actual fighting), are largely brought about by those who have a
direct pecuniary interest in exciting them, either for stock-
jobbing or for newspaper-selling purposes.
104 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
In former days, Friends, as we all know, had
continually to suffer in person and in purse for their
testimonies ; and in those sufferings lay the secret
of their influence. Most of the battles thus fought
have been actually won ; and Friends, therefore,
have not of late years had much opportunity of
giving these striking proofs of their sincerity. They
have even been reproached with comfortably enjoying
wealth protected by the sword, while refusing to take
their share in the defence of their country. I do not
say that the reproach has been deserved. But surely
it becomes us to live in such a manner as to make
it manifestly absurd. Surely those who feel it their
duty to hold aloof from the sacrifice of blood and
treasure so freely made by others on behalf of our
common country, and who have even refused obe-
dience to demands made upon them by the law, are
bound to be very clear, not only in their own con-
sciences, but in the sight of all men, as to their
motives for such abstinence. That abstinence, to
command respect, must be seen to proceed, not from
any slothful unwillingness to encounter the hardships
or the sufferings of war, but from a determination to
risk the sacrifice of whatever can be protected by the
sword rather than be accessory to its use against our
brethren. Unless we do in very truth rise above the
war spirit, we shall assuredly, in the eyes of others, if
War and Superfluities 105
not in fact, fall below it. And if the salt have lost its
savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? In our refusal
to fight, upon the ground that we are Christians, we
are in effect claiming to be in this matter as salt to
the national morality, and shall we be content to
become fit for nothing but the dunghill? Yet a
Quaker who lives in and for such things as can be
defended by the sword which he declines to use, is
certainly sinking below the soldier's level. It is not
by sitting still in comfort, and talking about the
"horrors of war," that we shall ever bring about the
reign of peace on earth ; that can come to pass only
as a consequence of the triumph of Christian principle,
and Christianity is not for those who count their lives
dear to themselves. It is the religion of the Cross,
or else a mere name. It is as soldiers of Christ in
deed and in truth, joyfully enduring hardness, turn-
ing undauntedly the left cheek to those who have
smitten us on the right, heaping coals of fire on the
heads of our enemies, and overcoming evil with good,
that we can alone hope to make an end of wars and
fightings on earth. To fight under Christ's banner
against selfishness means strenuous living and in-
cessant self-discipline. It means that we should
rejoice in our growing independence of outward
things ; and that if we have to wait for opportunities
of active and tangible or definite service, the time of
106 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
waiting should be spent in vigilant training and self-
preparation.
The special value of this method of promoting
peace through a denial of the spirit which leads to
war is that it is practical, though no doubt indirect.
It bears the peculiar and well known Quaker stamp
of witness bearing, or " testimony," not in word but
in deed, and at one's own cost. We are in these days
often tempted to go out into words and doctrines, and
to transfer to preaching some of the strength which
used to be stored up in silence and spent in practice.
The old method of withstanding evil was first to clear
ourselves from it with scrupulous thoroughness, before
attacking it in others. Clean hands and resolute
firmness were felt to be of more value than a ready
tongue in fighting that battle which is " not ours but
God's." And it remains unchangeably true that it is
by the purifying of each individual life through indi-
vidual obedience that the actual kingdom of our Lord
can alone be extended. In so deep a sense are we
members one of another, that to stand clear of evil is
not only the necessary condition of influencing others
for good, and itself the most effectual of influences, —
it is the actual increase of the health of the body.
In each one of us either the redeeming spirit, or the
spirit which opposes redemption, must find a foot-
hold, a fortress, a power ; and no detail of life is too
War and Superfluities 107
small to bear the impress of the spirit which has the
dominion, and to minister to its growth.
This method of witnessing by personal plainness and
simplicity against the source of wars has, moreover, the
advantage of being open to all, at once and continually.
Many of us have but little opportunity of speaking in
favour of peace where words can be of any avail, and
some of us even feel little hope from any mere words
on this subject. For in words there is, indeed, but
little difference of opinion as to the desirableness of
peace. No one seriously denies it. The controversy
turns not upon the ideal state of mankind, but upon
the practical possibility of maintaining right without
bloodshed. To some of us it seems idle to think that
bloodshed can ever be prevented, or, indeed, that
much good would be gained by its prevention, unless
and until the spirit of strife and of self-aggrandisement
is cast out by the spirit of beneficence. It is idle to
expect that nations will voluntarily forego the objects
of strife until the gradual working of the spirit of
Christianity shall have thoroughly leavened the lump.
But to this working we can all (women perhaps
especially) contribute in our own lives and homes.
Each one of us can throw some weight into the scale
of simplicity and disinterestedness ; each one can, in
some degree, lessen the pressure of the scramble for
outward things in which the weak are trampled
108 Thoughts on the Centred Radiance
upon, by living for better things than can be bought
with money.
And lastly, we cannot separate one "testimony"
from another without loss of power. The Christian
life is one whole — a spirit which must have the
dominion wherever it enters, and which grows by
its victories over all that would hinder it. We must
go down to the root in this matter before we can
be set free. Selfishness will not be cured by lopping
at the branches. The strong man armed will keep
his goods in peace, till a stronger than he comes to
set the captives free. But we can welcome this
strongest of all influences ; we can open our hearts to
the Deliverer, and yield all that is within us to His
winnowing power. Where Christ enters, the love of
the world is cast out. As soon might we expect a
prisoner to cling to his chains, as that one whom
Christ hath made free should wrap himself in weak-
ening personal indulgences, or cumber himself with
cares on an unnecessary scale, "holding treasures in
the self-pleasing spirit," or "stretching beyond his
compass."
Was there ever a time when the ancient testimony
against cumbering possessions and the love of them
was more sorely needed by the state of the world
than it is now ? Not war only, but grinding poverty
and its degrading results, call aloud to those who have
War and Superfluities 109
ears to hear for a fresh revolt against the bondage of
self-indulgence, for a fresh uprising of the victory
which overcometh the world, even our faith. Surely
it should be matter of rejoicing to us all, that in the
self-denying ordering of our lives and homes we can
at once brace and strengthen our own spirits, and
hold forth to our comrades the signal of victory, the
pledge of the all-subduing power of Christ
The testimony borne by Friends against all war
has ever been a personal and practical, not a theo-
retical, still less a sweepingly condemnatory one.
The spirit which has freed many of them from all
that leads to war, and has made them steadfastly
refuse, at whatever cost of suffering, to take any part
in it, is not a spirit which is ready to condemn others,
or slow to acknowledge "any virtue or any praise";
it desires to judge righteous judgment or not to judge
at all ; it is not discouraged by the slow growth of
the Divine harvest ; the peace it seeks is not a mere
international concord, such as may consist with, or
even be based on, injustice, but the peace of God
which is the fruit of righteousness ; and as regards
those under a dispensation differing from its own,
it rests in a quiet, often silent, dependence on " the
universality of the grace of Christ" — the light that
lighteneth every man that cometh into the world —
redeeming and reproving according to what each one
110 Thoughts on the Centred Radiance
has received, not according to that which has not
been made possible to him.
To see this light, and to grow up into this blessed
spirit, each one in our measure, we need only to be
willing and obedient Our measure may as yet be a
very small one, but the Light is a living seed in each
heart, and must grow as it is obeyed — its growth no
man can measure or limit ; the fulness of its glory no
eye hath seen.
LIVING ALONE1.
The thought of loneliness strikes perhaps a colder
chill, upon the youthful imagination especially, than
that of death. This enemy cannot be encountered
and vanquished in a moment of enthusiasm. It must
be met in detail and in cold blood. It may mean
years of gradual decay and failure. It is generally
spoken of with a tinge even of blame, as something
which no healthy mind would choose. Long ago it
was said upon high authority that it was not good for
man to be alone, and there is a sense in which
experience certainly confirms the belief.
Yet with one voice all those who have aimed at high
attainments in the spiritual life have proclaimed the
value, even the necessity, of solitude ; and for its use
the highest possible examples may be quoted. Its
very name has an austere charm, and recalls to us
the memory of some of the moments we could least
afford to lose out of our lives.
1 An address given to the Sunday Society at Newnhaia
College.
112 Thoughts on the Centred Radkmce
Obviously we need alternations of solitude and
company as we need alternations of light and dark-
ness, summer and winter, growth and decay. The
practical problem is how to provide for the pre-
servation of salutary proportions ; and this may be
in some degree simplified by attention to the various
senses in which it is possible to be " alone."
Loneliness is certainly not identical with the mere
absence of human beings. To be "alone in a crowd"
is but too sadly familiar an experience. And pro-
bably few of us, after early youth, are so happy
as not to know the yet more awful aloneness which
may fall upon us in the presence even of our best
beloved, when some film of separation arises — a
" little cloud " of prophetic significance. It may be
the horror of sudden loneliness when a closely
cherished sufferer, whose every word and look has
long been our absorbing study, for the first time fails
to recognise us — when our questions bring no reply,
our most earnest assurances convey no comfort In
a moment we are out of each other's reach — side by
side still, but each unutterably alone. Or worse than
this, in the fulness of life and health, and growing
intimacy and joyful confidence, some careless word
or look or action, forgotten perhaps by one in a
moment, has revealed to the other a divergence
which will not be deeper or crueller when it has
spread into a chasm across which no voice can pass.
Living Alone 113
In cases like this it is perhaps but for a moment
that we stay to dwell upon the sense of loneli-
ness. The chasm, though deep, is narrow still, and
we turn our eyes from it, and passionately fix
them upon what yet remains to us — if by any means
the gulf may be bridged over and all may yet be
well.
But such glimpses teach us something of the real
essence of separation, which is of wide application.
We meet each other in many different planes as well
as at many points. Two human beings may be cut
off from all interchange of word or thought (as for
instance by the illness of one of them) while yet
physically they are in each other's immediate presence,
and fundamentally they are absolutely one in heart.
The intermediate union is destroyed, while the most
superficial and the deepest are alike intact. And
surely when the separation, instead of being of the
comparatively innocent kind which illness or death
or absence can bring about, has in it the bitterness
of wrong-doing, of lowered esteem, even of personal
betrayal, we may yet take our stand upon something
deeper than all these, — without which indeed these
would soon destroy their own power to torture, — and
hold firm to a love stronger than all human wilful-
ness ; a love which grows by forgiveness ; a love
nearer the foundations of our being than any of our
judgments can reach.
114 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
So far as we can penetrate into these hidden
depths it would seem as if there could be no such
thing as absolute loneliness. For we know nothing
deeper than love ; and where perfect love is, loneliness
like fear is for ever cast out. But these depths are
hidden — happily and rightly hidden — from ordinary
observation. It is no denial of their reality to say
that in the process of firmly anchoring ourselves to
them, we have to let go link after link of our connec-
tion with our fellows ; to encounter cloud after cloud
of what at any rate seems like separation, of what
hides us from each other's comprehension.
Vainly still we strive to mingle
"With a being of our kind
Vainly hearts with hearts are twined
For the deepest still is single.
We cannot be finally freed from loneliness except by
encountering it. It will be subdued only by those
who dare to meet it with a hearty embrace.
We shape our own lives in a sort of underground,
gradual, unconscious, piecemeal fashion. And in
nothing do we mould them more largely and more
blindly, than in the degree in which they are combined
with other lives. Not only do we exercise some sort
of choice — how much or how little is indeed a mystery
— in the chief voluntary combination, that of mar-
riage; but all through life we go on adding to or
winnowing our stock of alliances, ties, friendships,
Living Alone 115
partnerships, tightening or relaxing our bonds as
seems good and possible to us, and weaving for our
souls a garment not less close and important to us
than our physical frame. This process is carried on
chiefly by rule of thumb ; and that rule is no doubt
on the whole the best for the purpose. But one
important distinction is often and sometimes dis-
astrously forgotten. It is that between living in each
other's presence and sharing each other's lives.
It is vainly supposed that we can cure isolation
by joining company. You might as well expect to
melt pebbles by shaking them together in a bag. On
the other hand it is equally idle to suppose that you
can rid yourself of ties by withdrawing to a distance.
You are just as likely to tighten them by absence, if
they have any real hold to begin with. The fact is
that our lives are shaped, in this as in other respects,
largely by our own choice, but not by the choice of
yesterday or to-day ; rather by that of years and
years ago. We reap what we have sown ; not what
we are sowing. We shape our own lives not only
largely but blindly, and we judge blindly of each
other's lives.
Thus we talk of people as " living alone " merely
because they occupy a separate dwelling, although
their lives may be in fact crowded with human
intercourse, and even with human presences, as well
as perhaps closely bound up with many ties of kindred
8—2
116 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
and affection. And we fail to recognise the depths
of seclusion which others find in the very heart of a
large family party. Indeed one of the great advan-
tages of family life (I suppose I may add of college
life ?) is that it affords a protection against the outer
world — a means of retreat, a possibility of transacting
social details by proxy. The solitary unit is exposed
on all sides to the pressure of surrounding humanity,
and must carry on all social transactions single
handed ; while the studious member of a family is
guarded on all sides, as by a living curtain, from any
profane intrusion. Both need solitude, but perhaps
the one who most needs to make an effort to secure
it is the one who is generally supposed to be suffering
from it.
This misconception is partly owing to the baflling
effect on the imagination of mere negatives. Nature
may abhor a vacuum, but Fancy refuses to take the
trouble of filling it. The life which has no familiar
furniture will naturally be filled with something ; but
most people are content to call it nothing. So-and-
so has neither wife nor child — what can he possibly
find to do with his money? Such an one has no
household duties — how can she be too busy to attend
to this or that for me ? One thing which all who live
alone certainly need is the power — mainly I believe
imaginative — to outline their own lives. And by this
I mean the power of marking out distinctly the
Living Alone 117
channels into which one's energies should flow, and
for which they should be reserved. People are but
too ready to make demands on time and strength
not obviously appropriated ; and without a distinct
outline in one's own mind it is doubly hard not to
yield to such demands.
It is no wonder if the ordinary imagination fails
to fill up the outline suggested by the words " living
alone." They give it plenty of scope, but scanty
nourishment, and it is apt to reflect their vagueness.
Perhaps it is to this vagueness that some of the dread
inspired by the idea of living alone is due, just as
many people account for their fear of death as being
a dread of " the unknown." People allow themselves
to think of living alone as a fate not to be encountered,
and even consider it as a sort of wrong-doing. It
would surely be more reasonable to consider it wrong
to dread any fate to which humanity is liable ; and
isolation in some of its senses is obviously inevitable
for some of us. The practical question is whether
we shall regard it as a misfortune to be remedied to
the utmost of our power and at all costs, or as a
distinguishing circumstance to be accepted and turned
to account.
Let it be conceded at once that isolation in the
sense of a failure to share in the interests and the
concerns of others is a deplorable condition, which if
lasting may be confidently traced to faulty or at best
118 Thoughts on the Central Badicmce
to feeble action, and which does call for remedy at
all costs. But isolation in the sense of separateness
from family ties is a condition from which no effort
can always secure us. It is when this lot has fallen
upon any one that he, or still more she, will be a
mark for the arrows of advisers, nine out of ten of
whom will urge the formation of artificial ties as a
defence against loneliness. The advice being so
generally proffered is no doubt generally acceptable
and suitable. Yet for a (perhaps small but by no
means insignificant) minority it would be a disastrous
mistake to abandon a separate position. It is a
position which has its advantages, both of immunity
and of discipline.
It is a strange sensation when one finds oneself
for the first time entirely detached from surrounding
lives. Apart from the sorrow in which such isolation
in most cases originates, it has (or may have) in itself
a certain unfamiliar charm. Indeed it is often the
one thing which the sorely wounded human being,
like the wounded animal, instinctively desires. To be
relieved from all external pressure — freed from all
observation — to be able to let the mind re-adjust
itself to its altered circumstances without interference
— these things are among the most essential aids to
recovery. The employment of these natural remedies
is pretty sure before long to excite suspicion and
even disapprobation. Whether the human race is
Living Alone 119
jealous of its exclusion from the counsels of one poor
suffering mortal, or is itself so emphatically gregarious
that a solitary position shocks its deepest instincts, it
is certain that it will very soon begin to make its
protest felt in one form or another. Of course the
protest, if disregarded, is very soon dropped. The
world is far too busy to concern itself, for more than
a moment, about the harmless lunatics who do nothing
worse than disappear from it. An admonition or
two, a gently affixed label of eccentricity, and the
thing is done. And then begins the real experience
of isolated existence — an experience hardly to be
communicated, but yet not wholly indescribable.
Perhaps its most marked quality is its liability to
gentle expansion and contraction of parts — a kind of
silent palpitating movement from within — which no
doubt goes on in some degree wherever there is life,
but becomes obvious only when the correcting
pressure of other lives is removed. Here indeed lies
the great danger of solitude. Small things may loom
large, and great interests shrivel up into nothing, and
there is no one present to redress the balance.
Unless one can trust oneself to keep a firm hand
upon this tendency, and learn to redress the balance
for oneself, one had better not venture upon a lonely
life. But experience seems to show that the balance
has a tendency to redress itself, as the disturbance
subsides. The process may be a slow one. When
120 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
things have gone wrong, and some painful communi-
cation has made an undue impression, which five
minutes talk, or better still one hearty laugh, with
the partner of one's existence would have set right,
it may be hours or even days before the unassisted
reason fully re-asserts itself, and reduces the whole
thing to its true proportions. Yet this is an art, like
any other, to be acquired by practice ; and the very
necessity of performing the process without help
forces upon one a certain dexterity in it. It must
also be remembered that the effect of close ties is
not exclusively sobering. There are trifles which
loom large through the domestic atmosphere, almost
as inevitably as others are magnified by the vapours
of solitude. The hermit is impervious to many an
arrow which scatters dismay among the flock And
feeling may be echoed and re-echoed in sympathy
until it is nursed up into something out of all
proportion to its actual justification. From this
danger at any rate the hermit is free.
Of course there would be something odious and
inhuman about the deliberate choice of a solitary
life in preference to the more normal and more
obviously fruitful conditions of family relationship.
But such a deliberate preference is not in question.
We are comparing the hermit's life, not with the
natural family life, but with an artificial imitation of
it. We are considering whether for those who
Living Alone 121
inevitably stand apart from any natural and ready-
made ties it may not be wiser to use than to get rid
of such an open space in the labyrinth of life.
The Roman Catholic Church has always empha-
sized the advantages of solitude, with that official
stamp of definite outline which to some of us has the
effect almost of caricature. We Protestants on the
contrary recognise in some dim fashion that no
outward condition can be an unmixed and absolute
gain. It follows that none can be without its
advantages for special purposes. We object to the
arbitrary creation of disabilities ; but we need not
therefore ignore the inevitable accidents — or as we
may I believe truly call them, the Providential
accidents — of life, or fear to turn them boldly to
account. And the accident of separateness, if
deliberately recognised and accepted, may serve as
a setting apart for uses not less sacred than those
which belong to any visible tie.
"Stone walls do not a prison make" — nor do
empty chambers make a lonely life. That there is in
the human mind a power of making the " iron bars "
of our cage into a hermitage, and the empty spaces
around us into a sanctuary, we all instinctively feel ;
but it needs some reflection to understand what is
the spell by which such transformations are to be
wrought ; and to evolve the fruitful use from the
passive endurance of wintry conditions. Indeed we
122 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
may have to practise much patient endurance before
we arrive at fruitfulness ; but let us always keep
fruitfulness before our minds as the ideal to be aimed
at — let us steadfastly regard the wilderness as destined
to blossom as a garden.
Do you remember the words in which Browning
describes the true uses of solitude as transfigured by
woman's deepest love ?
"Might I die last and show thee! Should I find
Such hardship in the few years left behind
If free to take my lamp and go
Into thy tomb, and shut the door and sit
Seeing thy face on those four sides of it
The better that they are so blank, I know!
Why time was what I wanted, to turn o'er
Within my mind each look, get more and more
JBy heart each word, too much to learn at first;
And join thee all the fitter for the pause
Neath the low lintel's doorway. That were cause
For lingering though thou calledst, if I durst ! "1
Thus human love may grow even by outward
separation. We talk sometimes as if our chief object
must be to fill life with interests. For that it seems
to me that we need hardly take thought. Life is for
ever multiplying our interests. What we do need is
the power of contemplation, including that of reducing
the multitude of interesting matters to order. And
this can never be done in a crowd or in a hurry. We
must be alone — alone long enough to enter into some
1 "Any Wife to any Husband."
Living Alone 123
degree of stillness — before we can see things in their
true proportions and in due subordination. No
lovely thing can have its full loveliness except in due
subordination to that which is truly more important.
And nothing can be altogether valueless when in its
right place and right relation to other things. There-
fore such solitude as is necessary for the falling into
order of the various elements of our life is, I think, a
real spiritual necessity.
And here we touch the deepest, that is the
religious, significance of solitude. Consciously or
unconsciously, those who are athirst for the things
which are unseen and eternal have always recognised
the possibility of a rivalry between the human and
the divine in our affections. From very early times
and in many countries it has been felt that the
absence of close human ties does open possibilities of
self-devotion to the Divine not to be purchased at a
lower price. There is I am sure truth at the bottom
of this widely spread religious instinct ; but to
explain or to define the limits of its truth would be
equally beyond me.
Of one thing I feel sure — that our deepest and
purest sense of the love of God is nourished by, if
not altogether derived from, our experience of human
love ; and that wilfully to shut ourselves out from
this most fruitful of all spiritual educations in the
hope of learning more of the Divine life would be
124 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
inevitably to defeat our own object. What we have
to remember in this connection is that (as regards
human love at any rate) it is not in the continual
presence of its object that love gains most strength.
Absence and silence play a part as important as sight
and words in strengthening and in purifying our
affections. The manner and the proportions in which
these opposite elements — of presence and absence,
speech and silence — must be combined and interwoven
in order to the perfect ripening of human affections
is as completely beyond our ken as the choice is
usually beyond our reach. Our part is not to
educate ourselves, but to make the most of the
education provided for us. Keenly as we may feel
the privation of close human ties, it would I think be
a loss even more disastrous to be deprived of the
broad field of inward solitude.
What then are the special fruits to be reaped
from solitude, or rather from a right use of it ?
Here we must distinguish between inward and
outward solitude. I do not know how far it is a
peculiarity, but to my own mind human beings seem
to be constructed in concentric layers like the coats
of the onion. The difference between inward and
outward is certainly not equally obvious to us all ;
but I shall venture to assume the existence of these
coats or layers, which whatever their real number
may, for our purpose, be roughly divided into three
Living Alone 125
classes or regions — the central, the intermediate, and
the superficial, — corresponding to our relations with
the eternal, the human, and the material environ-
ments.
The outermost layer of our being, which is cogni-
sant of material things, becomes in solitude more
vividly aware of its surroundings ; and suitable
surroundings certainly help the sense of solitude — a
hill-top, the sea-shore, or a wide moor or bogland being
perhaps the most favourable to it. This outermost
layer is of course very dependent on the visible
presence or absence of our fellow-creatures, and it is
a simple matter to say whether outwardly we are or
are not alone. But when we begin to attend to what
is experienced in the intermediate layer — below the
surface as we say — we begin to be aware of the
double meaning of solitude. In this region it is that
we may be alone in a crowd. Here, as I began by
saying, we may be alone in the very presence of our
best beloved. Here also we may, on the other hand,
whilst outwardly alone, be aware of a crowding of
human relations from which we may wish, yet find it
hard, to withdraw ourselves. A lonely life may mean
a life of few affections, however deep and close may
be the ties which bind us to the few ; or it may mean
a life in which all relations, however many, are
comparatively remote, — a life in which we stand as it
were in a hollow central space, though our relations
126 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
with other lives may be multiplied to the extent, or
beyond the extent, of our power of reciprocation.
Now our wealth or our poverty in this intermediate
region — the region of the affections — is a matter very
largely under our own control. Not of course that
we can, at any given moment, change it by a mere
effort of will, any more than we can in a moment
make our gardens full or empty ; but that we reap as
we have sown ; and that if our harvest is to be a good
one we must not only sow, but water, — and weed
Our heart-husbandry will no doubt often be thwarted
by powers beyond our control, yet the accumulated
result of care, whether in sowing or in weeding out,
is practically as certain as that of any agricultural
operations in the outer world Given a certain
vividness of memory and imagination and a steady
care in the cultivation of inner relations, and we need
never in this region be altogether alone. For below
the surface our friends are always ours, whether they
be visibly with us or not.
And not only does our wealth in this region
depend largely on our own exertions in the cultivation
of friendships, but we have over the inward presences
of our friends a degree of control which I think we
often fail to recognise. We can direct our attention
to them till we endow them with a warmth and a
vividness approaching that of visible presence. Or
we can withdraw ourselves from them into what truly
Living Alone 127
deserves to be called inward solitude ; until the
hollow space in which we live and move becomes an
awful sanctuary. The power of thus suspending our
intermediate activities and withdrawing into the
stillness of the sanctuary is the very basis of prayer ;
to cultivate it in a right measure is the very
foundation of a devout habit of life ; and to under-
stand wisdom in this matter has an importance which
I think we can hardly over-estimate.
It is assuredly for the sake of learning thus to
withdraw into the inner sanctuary of our own hearts
that the saints of all times have so valued outward
solitude. And periods of outward solitude must
always be an important help towards this attainment.
We all have at least a germ of such power ; and
where it is either by nature or through cultivation
really vigorous, it may make us independent of
outward solitude. There are those who in any
company and under any circumstances can retire into
that "secret place of the Most High" where they
may "abide under the shadow of the Almighty."
I said that I believe it supremely important for
us to understand wisdom in this matter. This is as
much as to say that it is not altogether an easy or a
simple one. There is indeed a danger in any voluntary
assumption of mental attitudes — on the one hand a
danger of unreality and on the other a danger of
over-straining the very mainspring of the soul. I
128 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
believe it to be possible to play tricks with one's own
mind, and to hypnotize oneself — certainly it is but
too possible to deceive oneself. I am not urging the
practice of inward solitude and silence as a duty
(though for some of us 1 believe it is a duty), I wish
rather to point out the nature of its function and the
object in order to which it may be rightly and safely
used.
Speaking just now of different mental regions I
said that the innermost region was that which corre-
sponded to our relation to the Eternal. Certain it
is that as we sink into the innermost depth of our
own mind we become aware of the things which are
unseen and eternal. If we are aware (and in speaking
of these matters one has to say if at every turn, for
here we are all out of our depth and here we can
often but guess at each other's experience), if we are
aware of having depths to sink into, we shall I believe
find in this central region above all the balance in
which the real weight and worth of things can be
tried — what has been called the balance of the
sanctuary. In the stillness of inward solitude things
find their level almost of their own accord. Here
we have that first condition for the use of either
balance or compass — freedom from disturbance —
the scales find their level, the needle settles down
towards the pole, the supremacy of that which is
truly supreme emerges from the confusions of time.
Living Alone 129
Here we learn as far as is possible to our fallible
minds to "understand our errors" — at least to
offer the prayer "cleanse Thou me from my secret
faults." In short when we enter into the place of
inward solitude, we find ourselves face to face with
God — with " the High and Holy One that inhabiteth
eternity" — and in the light of His countenance we
see the true value and beauty of all the things of
which our life is composed — especially the true value
and beauty of our human affections. For as I have
already said it is only in right subordination that any
lovely thing can have its fuD beauty. It is only as
seen from under the shadow of the Almighty, from
that inner sanctuary in which His presence is
supremely felt, that the glory of life can shine forth.
It is when all things begin to fall into their right
places as we ourselves come under the true judgment
of conscience, enlightened in the stillness by the
light of eternity, that all things are made new — all
bitterness and wrath and passion fade and pass away
as the shadows and the mists of night before the
sunrise. Here "the light that never was on sea or
land " brings out an order and a harmony undreamed
of in the rush and turmoil of outward life. Of all
the different lives we are leading it is the deepest
which is most easily ignored and stifled — yet it is the
deepest which gives the key to all the rest So
far from there being of necessity any incompatibility,
130 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
or even any rivalry, between the eternal things with
which we acquaint ourselves in solitude and the
lower joys and revelations of outward life, it is in the
sanctuary alone that the key-note can be struck to
which all life must be attuned if it is ever to become
harmonious and beautiful It is there only that we
enter into the full possession of those treasures of
human love which neither moth nor rust can corrupt.
The amount of solitude which is attainable or
would be wholesome in the case of any individual life
is a matter in which each of us must judge for
himself. I would not, if I might, attempt to pre-
scribe in this matter for any human being but myself
— and I feel that it needs much wisdom to minister
even to oneself in regard to it. But I also feel sure
that a due proportion — whether it be little or much
— a due proportion of solitude is one of the most
important conditions of mental health. Therefore
(to return to our original problem) if it be our lot
to stand apart from those close natural ties by which
life is for most people shaped and filled, let us not be
in haste to fill the gap ; let us not carelessly or rashly
throw away the opportunity of entering into that
deeper and more continual acquaintance with the
unseen and eternal things which is the natural and
great compensation for the loss of easier joys. The
loneliness which we rightly dread is not the absence
of human faces and voices — it is the absence of love.
Living Alone 131
And love is a plant vigorous enough to thrive on
all soils ; taking a new beauty from the rocky uplands
as well as from the rich and sheltered pastures. Love
can thrive and grow strong by absence as well as by
presence. I believe it does best with alternations of
ease and difficulty. At any rate it is clear that we
have to prepare for and to contend with a great
variety of outward conditions. Our wisdom therefore
must lie in learning not to shrink from anything that
may be in store for us, but so to grasp the master
key of life as to be able to turn everything to good
and fruitful account.
All love in its measure casts out loneliness. The
supreme Love of God casts it out absolutely and for
ever.
9—2
THE FAITH OF THE UNLEAKNED1.
The unbounded freedom with which all kinds of
speculations in religion, theology, and philosophy are
now carried on, and which to many of us appears to
be, like the freshness of the air, a condition to be
sacredly maintained, has yet to be purchased at no
small price of occasional trouble and even bewilder-
ment of mind in the case of readers intelligent enough
to be keenly interested in the many conflicting views
put before them, yet not so fully trained and equipped
by appropriate studies as to be able to deal with them
thoroughly and satisfactorily. Many of us who are in
this sense strictly speaking unlearned have no doubt
at times forsworn all further dabbling in the great
familiar impassable morasses — and yet have returned,
either deliberately or involuntarily, if not ourselves
to plunge in, yet at least to watch, as from the banks,
the performances of the experts who can not only
move freely, but wrestle with one another, in the
midst of the morass. Is our doing so a mere waste
1 A paper read to the St Paul's Association, Cambridge.
The Faith of the Unlearned 133
of time, or at best a mere amusement, and perhaps
a dangerous one at that? or is it possible for the
unlearned to gain something for themselves, and
perhaps even for others, from studies with which
they are mainly concerned only as bystanders, not
being entitled to the name of serious students ? Is
it safe for such bystanders to look on at controversies
which are apt to be disturbing in proportion to their
interest, and in watching which it is so difficult for
outsiders to judge of the competence of those who
offer themselves as guides?
Some of us have been daunted and warned off
altogether from those regions of thought which most
powerfully attract us by the declarations of our
teachers themselves that the great questions on
which they are engaged will never be answered —
some even adding that it would not make much
difference if they were ; and quoting perhaps the
lines
" Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about ; but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went."
But life is so interwoven that it is impossible to
fence off the part of it which belongs to practice and
rule of thumb from that in which the influence of
abstract speculation is perceptibly powerful We
feel instinctively that there is no part of our life and
134 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
conduct which is not in some way raised or lowered
by the attitude of those who in however impersonal
and remote and fragmentary a way are allowed to
guide our thoughts in the region of first principles.
In this sense the "great argument about it and
about" does immediately concern us all.
To us lookers on, the disputes of the learned bear
all the appearance of a battle, and it is hard for us
to be sure how much or how little is really at stake.
We cannot always tell whether the difference between
the combatants relates to facts, or only to the best
way of stating or of accounting for them. Take for
instance the perennial fate and freewill controversy.
The untrained mind wholly refuses to believe that it
makes no difference whether we call our will "free"
or not ; whether we do or do not recognise an all
pervading necessity. We may remind ourselves
again and again that our power to do or to abstain
from doing particular acts is not being maintained
by one disputant or surrendered by the other ; but
that this power and its conditions being what they
are, the disputants on both sides must aim at making
their theories square with them. Irresistibly the
imagination regards the champions of freewill as
striving to enfranchise the human race, and attributes
to the Necessitarian a nefarious inclination to bind or
paralyse it, — or worse still to palliate wrong. Again it
is hard for the untrained to give as much credit for
The Faith of the Unlearned 135
disinterestedness to the utilitarian as to the intui-
tionist. I do not venture to guess whether there is
any, and if so how much, justification in fact for such
rough and ready characterisations of the tendencies
attributed by the popular judgment to particular
schools of thought. But the fact that thought is for
the majority thus steeped in feeling and in ethical
significance seems to point to the justification of
that insatiable appetite which some of us feel for
the very crumbs which fall from the table of philo-
sophy. There must we think surely be some truth in
the popular notion that the great questions which have
so powerful and so permanent a grasp of the keenest
intellects must be worth all the struggles of which
philosophy is the record. It cannot be that nothing
would be changed for practical purposes by a real
decision between the determinists and the indeter-
minists could such a decision ever be arrived at.
Whether this be a true instinct or a mere popular
delusion, the ineradicable expectation of help from
such decisions powerfully attracts many of us towards
whatever parts of the subject may be within our
reach, and for reading about which we can command
sufficient leisure.
And here of course we have to consider what is
the object which we may reasonably hope to attain
by looking on at such controversies. I say nothing
of the educational value of serious studies in philo-
136 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
sophy. The unlearned for whom and as one of
whom I write are precisely not students. They are
only people who keenly feel, and sometimes yield to,
the attraction of metaphysical or ethical problems
obviously beyond their power fully to grasp. I think
I may safely assume that a natural gift for the studies
in question checks rather than stimulates the inclina-
tion to plunge out of one's depth ; at any rate this
inclination is certainly rebuked and kept in check
by familiarity with any high standard of intellectual
work
The faculty of asking questions however does not
appear to depend upon anything deserving the name
of study. Even a child can perceive, as well as the
most learned, the general bearing of certain lines of
thought. We do not wait for learning before
beginning to ask whence and whither? or why? The
importance of having a right and clear answer to
such questions as what is the meaning of Good, or of
Ought ? may be as clearly felt by the babe as by the
prophet. Thoughtful children ask these questions
long before they have so much as heard the names
of the great teachers who for so many ages have
wrestled with them. Indeed the power of asking
questions which goes for so much in every kind of
study seems to come by nature ; and it may be
important not to hurry over this earliest stage of the
educational process. There is something in the first-
The Faith of the Unlearned 137
hand experience whence these questions arise which
no amount of study of the thoughts of others can
supply ; however essential to ultimate clearness may
be the corrections which learning alone can provide.
I believe that the possibility of our making any
fruitful use of such smatterings of philosophy as we
can pick up from the flood of speculation surrounding
us all in these days depends on our having made
some genuine attempt, however humble, to think for
ourselves ; to construct out of our own actual
experience some sort of creed If we have in our
minds a real framework, be it ever so small, of
positive thought, we shall certainly find in whatever
books really interest us, even though we may be far
from fully mastering their contents, some materials
with which to carry on our nest-building — some fact
or theory which we do understand, and for which
there is a place in the growing structure. And the
process of adjusting the new and the old will supply
some rough kind of test of the value of what we pick
up. Some such edifice, constructed with our best
powers of thought and of observation, we must
certainly have if other people's thoughts are to be to
us anything more than momentary playthings. The
trouble is that other people's thoughts are apt to act
the part of the scriptural patch of new cloth on an
old garment, whereby "the rent is made worse."
Our home-grown theories are often sorely confused,
138 Thoughts on the Centred Radiance
if not shattered, by the additions we think to make
to them out of our neighbours' richer store.
Again we must ask ourselves, What is our aim ?
and what are we prepared to sacrifice in our pursuit
of truth?
The faith by which our souls live is a very different
thing from any theological or philosophical system,
be it ever so perfect. It is not to be attained at
second-hand, or by the teaching of others. It is the
immediate outcome of experience. The deepest and
most elementary of all experiences is the love of
God ; — that supreme love which is unlike all other
loves, not only in its strength but in its quality —
which is kindled in our hearts by Him who is Love.
If we have tasted this in ever so small a degree we
know what it is to be in Heaven. We know also
what it is to be in purgatory. For that which reveals
to us the glory of God reveals to us also the misery
of man — the reality of a redeeming Power — and the
blessedness of yielding ourselves even to its purifying
fires.
Now it is obvious that faith in this sense — this
resolute trust — is a thing entirely apart from specula-
tive thought The question before us is how far and
in what manner the two things affect one another.
Believing as I do that faith is insight penetrating to
the very rock on which all truth is built, I cannot
doubt that its possession sheds a unique light on the
The Faith of the Unlearned 139
whole region of thought and speculation. But the
question with which at this moment we are specially
engaged is not how faith may illuminate thought, but
how thought may affect faith.
If it be true that faith penetrates to the founda-
tions of all truth, thought in so far as it is true
must ultimately confirm faith. But thought being a
process of growth and of continual change, to which
the functions of sifting and testing are essential, will
of course at times seem to individuals to bar the way
to any sanctuary of the spirit. Thought not only
may but must question the reality of all things — of
nothing so earnestly as of the most important things.
There is a great cost to be counted before entering
upon so vast and so arduous an undertaking as that
of examining for ourselves the intellectual founda-
tions of the religious belief in which we have grown
up. For the learned it must be a severe, probably a
life-long task. For the unlearned it is obviously an
impossibility to grapple at first hand with the whole
subject. The very act of doing so implies learning.
But while contenting ourselves through an obvious
necessity with what is not only a bird's eye view
(that is a very remote and rudimentary view) of
things, but largely second-hand at that, we yet feel
the need of some preparation for meeting the direct
attacks which may be made by thought on even the
most elementary religious belief ; some position not
140 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
the less firm for its limitations which we can honestly
hold against all comers.
In the recognition of this position thought itself
can help us. We shall do well to arm ourselves
against attacks by the habit of thinking, as clearly
and as strenuously as may be, for ourselves. Hard
thinking helps, as much as hasty miscellaneous reading
hinders, the formation of solid convictions. Such
thought will assuredly tend to make clear to us the
distinction between first-hand experience and second-
hand interpretations of experience. The typical
utterance of a faith knowing itself to be unlearned,
but at the same time clearly recognising the first-
hand nature and the evidential value of its own
experience, is "whereas I was blind, now I see."
" Whether this man be a sinner I know not ; one thing
I know he hath opened mine eyes." The blind
man's cure was a fact within his own experience, and
he was not only spiritually but logically justified in
refusing to be deprived of it by any reasonings as to
the impossibility of its having been wrought by one
whom the authorities condemned. It is true that our
experience is not all of so striking and unmistakeable
a kind as this sudden change from darkness to light.
Some of us have been tempted almost to envy the
prodigal son and the lost sheep for the vividness of
the contrast between past and present which leaves
them no room to doubt of the reality of their con-
The Faith of the Unlearned 141
Tension. Yet it remains true that it is on our own
experience, be it what it may, that we must take our
stand in regard to the faith by which we are to live.
There is such a thing (thanks be where they are
due for that truth), there is such a thing as a revela-
tion to babes. If we had to choose between that
revelation on the one hand and wisdom and prudence
on the other, no one surely who has had a glimpse of
revelation would hesitate to let wisdom and prudence
go. But God's best gifts are not thus mutually de-
structive. The child-like element to which revelation
addresses itself lies deep in all our hearts — in none
deeper than in those of the poet and the philosopher.
What we have to do is to hold fast that which we
know by actual experience, letting those explain it
who can, and letting it influence our thought as it
may and should ; but above all " pondering in our
hearts" the things which have been shown to us
immediately. Faith is the grasp of the soul on the
innermost Central Reality, and to relax it because
thinkers are not agreed, or because we cannot under-
stand what they say, as to the nature of Reality,
would be folly indeed.
How far, when we have had such inward experience
as makes us to our own consciousness independent of
much speculative thought, it may yet be wise to listen
to the many voices offering more or less contradictory
explanations of the unseen things and of our relation
142 Thoughts on the- Central Radicmee
to them, is a difficult question. That which is most
precious to us as strangers and pilgrims is not a
correct system of thought, but a steadying and
guiding power, a grasp of something vivifying and
satisfying to our innermost needs. Are we endanger-
ing this guidance and control by not shutting out all
that might disturb our thought of it?
In a certain sense I think it must be admitted
that we a/re running some risk of a distraction which
for us may mean defeat, when we lay our minds open
to suggestions from all quarters as to the direction
of "the path of life." The princess in the Arabian
Nights who stopped her ears with wool against the
distracting voices which assailed her in her quest of
the singing fountain was justified by success. And
so perhaps may some of us be justified in turning a
deaf ear to the voice of the philosopher, the critic, or
the speculative thinker, whose thoughts confuse and
discourage us.
But there are others who feel, and I think rightly,
that whatever limits may be set to our range of
thought by want of time or of capacity, the voluntary
exclusion of disturbing influences is a very dangerous
resource. Sincerity forbids us so to pick and choose
as to read only what we know will serve to strengthen
our foregone conclusions. We need a better principle
of selection than the mere desire to avoid disturbance.
The experience of some of us does conclusively prove,
The Faith of the Unlearned 143
to ourselves at any rate, that disturbance by the
thoughts of others is one of the most fertilising and
purifying processes to which our own thought can be
subjected. It is by the shaking of what is shakeable
and the sifting of what is mixed that the residuum is
tested and guaranteed. And we learn sooner or
later that if we have but a germ of the faith which
means a real anchorage of the soul, the shattering of
successive outlines and boundaries of belief does but
throw us back with a firmer confidence upon an ever-
widening foundation of trust.
For this foundation is not a mere system of
doctrines. What it really consists of is a question
I cannot attempt to grapple with theoretically.
Heart and mind and will must certainly all contribute
to it. In these days we hear much about " the will
to believe.'' The words have to old-fashioned ears a
suspected sound ; yet they may not therefore be the
less valuable. But that the will to seeJe, and the will
to obey, must enter into that faith by which alone
the soul can live, seems to me as plain as daylight.
And of this resolve nothing outward can deprive us.
We do I think more or less deprive ourselves of it
when we hug our own idea of "orthodoxy" instead
of boldly and trustfully welcoming the light which
reaches us from all quarters and resolutely acting in
obedience to it. Light cannot contradict itself, nor
can the radiance reflected from all earthly objects
144 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
check the direct inshining into the heart and con-
science from the Central Source of Light itself.
If however we enter with an open mind into as
much as we can understand of philosophy, we must
indeed be prepared for many changes in our thoughts
— in the outline and form, that is, of our religious
belief. My point is that such changes if honestly
and carefully made will be in favour of truth, and
cannot injure the root of faith. A living root must
profit by whatever gives it room to grow. And the
root of faith is not any article of belief, however
axiomatic, but the resolve of the spirit to cleave to
what is Highest and Best. That Highest and Best
does not vary with the variety of human opinions
regarding it. It is there, be its name and its nature
what they may. The spirit bent on rising cannot be
deprived of the means of rising, since for such "defeat
itself is victory." Every fool's paradise given up for
truth's sake means a fetter struck off from the Life.
What can never be struck off, or need to be sacrificed
for truth's sake, is devotion to the Most High. The
more that devotion triumphs over seeming contradic-
tions and the more it absorbs into itself of contrasting
experiences, the richer and deeper and more broadly
based is our faith Contradiction — even in some
cases unspoken contradiction — may be a very severe
discipline ; but it braces the mind as gymnastic
exercises brace the muscles. Of course miscellaneous
, The Faith of the Unlearned 145
philosophical reading may have all the dangers of
unregulated gymnastics ; and speculation however well
regulated may divert the mind from deeper and more
important functions. We must always remember
that its office is not to provide a basis for our faith ;
that peace of mind can never be attained by answer-
ing questions ; and that what does not rest upon
argument cannot be at the mercy of argument. Souls
are redeemed not by study but by self-devotion — in
other words by cross-bearing. For this none of us
can lack opportunity.
Whatever enriches our own faith and clears away
some confusions from our thoughts must be of value
for the purposes of intercourse with others. The
deepest questions of philosophy being in these days
discussed in so broad-cast a fashion, it would seem to
be a selfish, as well as — for ourselves — a dangerous,
thing to turn our minds altogether away from them.
It is surely good to come out into the open, if only
that we may help to disprove the notion that a rigid
fixity of theological opinion is necessary to a living
faith. We hear a great deal in these days of the
need for a reconstruction of doctrines. It seems
to me that we need more urgently a reconsideration
of the place assigned to doctrines. If instead of
trying to find new expressions for old thoughts, we
were frankly and humbly willing to acknowledge our
ignorance, and to recognise how different a thing is
s. 10
146 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
that devotion to the Most High by which our souls
live from the forms of words by which it has from
time to time been sought to convey or to fix a
knowledge of the Highest, we should I think be
wiser, calmer, and more helpful to each other.
It is as we vacillate between the two attitudes —
the attitude of child-like faith seeking conscious
unity with the Highest, and the attitude of philosophy
seeking to understand the nature of unity and of the
Highest, — that we fall into confusion and loss. Philo-
sophy and Religion do not contradict one another ;
but they speak different languages. That of Philo-
sophy is hard to acquire and seeks the utmost
precision ; that of Religion is at once simple and
unfathomable, shining by its own light, and seeking
not precision but power.
The faith " revealed to babes " is emphatically the
spirit of trust ; its utterance is " though He slay me
yet will I trust Him." And its symbol is the Cross.
It is this spirit of trust which enables those who have
it " out of weakness to be made strong " ; to bear
without flinching, with undisturbed serenity, it may
be even with a rapture of joy unspeakable, whatever
comes to us from the Father's hand ; and which as
from His hand receives whatever befalls it. This
faith we have all seen in exercise where there was no
knowledge, and no capacity for the understanding, of
abstract thought. It needs only sorrow, pain and
The Faith of the Urilecumed 147
trial to bring out its brightness. Thought is well
exercised in enquiring into its nature and its justifica-
tion ; and thought also may serve to qualify those
who have any experience of it for bearing a wider
and clearer witness of it than is in the power of the
uneducated. Thought may serve the purposes of
faith ; it can never either produce or refute it. The
only injury that thought can do to faith is I believe
that of usurping its place ; beguiling the soul away
from the region of contemplation and resolve into
that of controversy. This is I think a very real and
serious danger in the present phase of widespread
interest in the multitude of questions of speculative
and practical importance which are being presented
on all hands in popular and attractive language.
If this be so, it becomes a matter of some
importance to consider what is really meant by
contemplation. The word covers many possible states
of mind For our present purpose I do not wish to
use it in the sense of that rapturous absorption in
the " mere unexpanded thought of the eternal God "
which is perhaps its innermost and deepest significa-
tion. I am thinking rather of the steady pondering
which is needed for the full comprehension of any
fundamental truth. We are all in danger of suffering
loss by allowing ourselves to be hurried from topic to
topic, beguiled into hasty and impatient handling of
problems deep enough to demand if not to baffle our
10—2
148 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
gravest thought. This is a snare especially besetting
the unlearned, and here we who are not students in
any serious sense may learn wisdom from those who
are so. No one can hope to master enough of any
real study even to pass (say) an examination for
honours at a University without the deliberate
devotion to it of a very considerable amount of
undisturbed time, and for the study of philosophy in
good earnest a lifetime of course is but very short.
But people will allow their faith to be shaken and
their whole views of life to be influenced and perhaps
irretrievably lowered by casual dippings into magazine
articles, or by the skimming of brilliant and cynical
books recommended as "interesting" by the last
visitor, without a thought of the time and the patience
which would be required to qualify themselves for
forming an intelligent opinion on the merits of any
one of the questions discussed.
It does seem to me to be a matter of great
importance that we should honestly and seriously
consider where we stand with regard to philosophy ;
whether we are in fact qualified to grapple at all
with its problems, and whether by merely playing
with them we may not be disqualifying ourselves for
looking at life steadily and sanely from the quite
equally legitimate standpoint of the unlearned but
not inexperienced human spirit. If the unlearned
must be content to leave many interesting questions
The Faith of the Unlearned 149
entirely on one side, they have the not trifling
compensation of being able to leave much feeling
unanalysed. Serious students of philosophy must be
ready to analyse everything, and must of necessity
spend the greater part of their brain-power on
abstractions. We who are not students at all may
hold fast to the contemplation of concrete and living
examples of whatever interests or attracts us. At
any rate, as regards our own intimate and sacred
religious experience, there is real blessing in being
able to dwell upon its teachings without the perpetual
endeavour to reduce its intellectual elements into
distinct propositions, and to weigh the evidence for
and against each of these in logical scales. We must
not object to such weighing and sifting in itself. But
we do well to recognise that such work belongs only
to those specially trained for it ; and to take our
stand boldly and humbly upon the ground not of
skilled reasoning but of first-hand experience. The
unlearned are but too ready to exaggerate the value
of dialectical skill, and to make feeble and ineffectual
attempts to use it, instead of trusting their own
mother- wit, and clearly limiting themselves to matters
within their own competence. I cannot say how
grievous seems to me the mistake of letting ambitious
attempts to understand usurp the place of simple
and resolute determination to trust.
For trusting, though the simplest and the most
150 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
fitting for the ignorant of all mental attitudes, is yet
no mere passive leaning on others. The trusting
which is another name for faith, is an active principle
of obedience, to be carried out in every detail of our
daily life. It belongs in a peculiar manner to that
child-like heart which learning neither gives nor
takes away, but which the frivolous playing with
deep matters is certain to mislead And we may be
misled, and beguiled of all the joy of obedience by
getting out of our depth, — not always through frivolity,
but often through mere want of understanding of the
danger. This is why I so greatly desire that we who
cannot claim to be serious students of philosophy
may at least have a sufficient sense of what that
claim implies to know our own place apart from it,
and to make the most of the advantages belonging to
that place, which if low is at any rate safe.
THE FEAR OF DEATH.
We add a strange bitterness to the last parting,
inasmuch as upon so many of the subjects relating to
it we doom ourselves to a sort of anticipated loneliness.
Few of us have the courage to speak quietly and
freely of our own prospects of mortality with those
nearest and dearest to us. Tenderness and custom
combine to seal our lips ; and there grows up a habit
of reserve which we scarcely wish to break through.
Yet the veil of habitual silence which we throw over
death, as concerning ourselves, adds to that sense of
mystery and dullness which it were surely wiser as
far as may be to dispel than to increase. Each of us
must die alone ; but we need not encounter the fear
of death alone.
How far is it true to say that the fear of death is
a natural and universal instinct ? or rather to what
extent does the instinctive fear of it prevail among
ourselves ? The very reserve of which I have spoken
makes it impossible to answer with any confidence.
152 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
If such reserve may be taken as an indication of
shrinking from a painful subject, this shrinking would
appear to be much less strong among the poor than
the rich. Their outspokenness with respect to their
own approaching death, or that of parents or children
whom they may be nursing with the utmost tender-
ness, is very startling to unaccustomed ears, and
might almost suggest indifference, had we not ample
reason to know that it is compatible not only with
tender affection but with deep and lasting sorrow for
the very loss of which by anticipation they spoke
so unhesitatingly. No doubt all habits of reserve
imply more or less of the power of self-control,
which is so largely dependent upon education ; but
there would seem to be also a real difference of
feeling between rich and poor about death Perhaps
their habitual plainness of speech about it may
contribute towards lessening the fear of it among
them. But there is an obvious and deeply pathetic
explanation of their calmness in the prospect of it
for themselves or for those dearest to them. The
hardness and bareness of life lessens its hold upon
them ; sometimes even makes them feel it not an
inheritance to be coveted for their children. The
dull resignation with which they often say the little
ones are " better off" when they die, tells a grievous
story of the struggle for mere existence ; while the
simplicity of their faith in the unseen is equally
The Fear of Death 153
striking in its cheerful beauty. Both habits of mind
tend to diminish the fear of death itself, as well as
the unwillingness to speak of it which belongs to
more complicated states of feeling and more luxurious
habits of life.
It is of course impossible fully to distinguish be-
tween the fear of death, and the fear of that which
may come after death ; and this is not the place for
fully considering the grounds of the latter fear. But
our feeling about the great change is assuredly
composed of many elements, and the nature of our
expectation of another life is by no means the only
thing which makes death more or less welcome. We
do not probably at all fully realise how wide is the
range of possible feeling about this life, making our
anticipations of its ending as many-tinted almost as
those with which we contemplate the hereafter. We
tacitly agree in common conversation to avoid the
subject as it concerns ourselves and our interlocutors,
and in speaking of others we make it a point of good
manners to refer to it as matter of regret ; while
religious books and sermons always assume that the
King of Terrors can be encountered with calmness
only by the aid of that faith which they preach.
But is it really the case that apart from the terrors of
religion and the courtesies of feeling, the end of life
would always be unwelcome in its approach to our-
selves and to others ? Is there inherent in all of us
154 Thoughts on the Centred Radiance
a universal craving to prolong the term of this
sublunary existence, and to prevent the loosening
of any of its ties ?
We may be pretty sure that there is some
foundation in reason for any strongly prevalent
manipulation of feeling. It is easy to see how this
particular practice has grown up ; but it does seem to
have passed the limit of sincerity, and therefore of
wholesomeness. Even if we may not speak freely, it
must be well to think truly in a matter of such deep
and frequent concern ; and it can surely be no true
part of religion to deepen the natural opposition of
feeling to the lot which is appointed to alL
One of the great distinctions which the voluntary
assumption of mourning tends to obliterate is that
between timely and untimely deaths. There is no
doubt a sense in which to the eye of faith no death can
be untimely, but this is as distinctly a matter of faith
as the blessedness of pain. Faith may discern a Tight-
ness in the cutting short of the young life, as in all
forms of suffering and affliction ; but though faith
may be able to surmount all obstacles, neither faith
nor reason can profit by our ignoring the natural
inequalities of the ground. Some deaths are not in
any true sense afflictions ; and to say so need imply
no disrespect, — nay it may convey the very highest
testimony, to the departed. We speak of survivors as
mourners, till we forget that there are survivors who,
The Fear of Death 155
in place of mourning, may for very love be filled with
a solemn joy in the completed course to which added
length of days could scarcely have added either
beauty or dignity. When we allow ourselves to
think of the reality rather than of the mere con-
ventional description of the event, it seems wonderful
that we should have only one word with which to
speak of the completion and of the destruction of a
human lifetime ; only one word for the event which
closes the long day's toil, and for that which crashes
like a thunderbolt into the opening blossom of family
life ; for that which makes and that which ends
widowhood ; for the final fulfilment or reversal of all
our temporal hopes ; for bereavement and for reunion.
It is true that in one sense it is " one event " which
befalls in all these cases, but the feelings belonging
to it have as wide a range of colour as the sunset
clouds. Need we wrap them all in the same thick
veil of gloomy language and ceremonial ?
At any rate, the feelings with which we con-
template the termination of our own earthly life
must vary indefinitely in different individuals, and
in the same individual at different times ; and it
would be a matter of deep interest to compare our
respective experiences if we could bring ourselves to
do so.
It is sometimes said that no one can tell what his
own feeling about death would be, until he has been
156 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
brought face to face with it. This is no doubt true ;
but it is also true that the feelings with which we
regard it from a distance vary as much as those with
which we should meet its near approach, and that
the former are more important to our welfare than
the latter. To be "through fear of death all their
lifetime subject to bondage," is a heavy burden, and
I believe not an uncommon one. Generalising from
the scanty materials gleaned by one ordinary observer,
I believe that the purely instinctive fear is strongest
in people of a very high degree of vitality ; it is the
shadow cast by intense love of life, and seems to
depend in a great measure upon a certain kind of
physical vigour. This may be one explanation of the
strange and beautiful way in which the fear of death
so often disappears as the event itself approaches ; the
weakened frame does not shrink from the final touch
of that decay which has already insensibly loosened
its hold upon life. Professional observers speak of
cases in which the fear of dying is active to the last
as being extremely rare ; it should probably be
considered as a physical indication of vitality. For
the same reason, perhaps, the fear of death is often
comparatively slight in early youth, before the
constitution has reached its full vigour, and before
the habit of living has been very firmly established.
At the same time, the very energy and buoyancy of a
perfectly vigorous physical organisation help to dispel
The Fear of Death 157
or to neutralise painful impressions ; so that although
the idea of death may be more naturally abhorrent
to the strong than to the weak, they may be less
habitually oppressed by the thoughts of it.
There also seems to be a deep, though obscure,
connection between the wish and the power to live.
Physicians and nurses have strange stories to tell of
cases in which a strong motive for living has seemed
sufficient to recall patients from the very grasp of
death. Sometimes the mere assurance, given with a
confident manner if a doubting heart, that recovery
is possible, seems to give strength to rally and may
turn the scale in favour of life. For this reason,
amongst others, medical men are generally extremely
unwilling to tell patients that there is no hope. There
are cases on record in which such an announcement,
though voluntarily elicited and met with perfect
apparent calmness, has seemed to sap the strength
in a moment and cause a sudden and rapid sinking.
It is perhaps some physical instinct of self-preserva-
tion, rather than any want of courage, which makes
some sick people so carefully shun all opportunities
for any such communication. The curious physical
results of mental expectation make it often most
inexpedient for the sick to know all that is known to
others about their state ; and perhaps only those who
have lived long in sick rooms can fully appreciate
the blessing to the watchers of having to do with a
158 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
patient who neither anxiously questions nor fears to
hear or to speak the plain truth, making it clear that
to him the question of life or death is not one of
overmastering importance. To be able, while the
bodily life is trembling in the balance, to look beyond
it in undisturbed serenity, is not only to be in the
condition most favourable to health and happiness, it
is to radiate strength and courage to all around And
some such influence, though in a more diffused and
less perceptible form, is exercised during health by
those who do not shrink from the prospect of death
Perfect serenity in regard to death is not to be
attained by any effort of the will, nor by any mere
process of reasoning ; it is rather the result of a
happy combination of bodily and mental conditions.
The chief of these conditions, the assured hope of a
future beyond the grave in comparison of which the
brightest earthly visions fade like a candle before the
dawn, is not given to all ; and in these days especially,
it is for many overshadowed, if not altogether blotted
out, by doubts and questionings which can no longer
be hidden from the multitude. Even to those who
most earnestly cling to the hope of immortality, it
would seem that our troublous inheritance of sym-
pathy must cast many a distressing side-light upon
prospects in which of old the faithful were able to
take undisturbed delight. However this may be, the
mere prospect of prolonged existence beyond the
The Fear of Death 159
grave, apart from other reasons for joyful confidence,
must be taken rather as enlarging the scope of our
hopes and of our fears than as necessarily altering
the balance between them. Habitual hopefulness
may colour the prospect beyond the grave with the
same glowing tints which it throws over this world,
so that in some cases the same cause which makes
life delightful makes death not unwelcome. Such a
state of mind, though rare, is not unknown. But
perhaps a perfect balance of feeling is more readily
to be found at a lower level of expectation.
It may be one of the natural compensations for a
comparatively low degree of vitality that, in thinking
of death, the idea of rest predominates over that of
loss, so that there is no alloy of pain in the reflection
that none of the troubles of this life can be more
than passing clouds ; that for each one of us " the
Shadow sits and waits " ; that the burden of life,
however heavy, must drop off at last ; and that none
can say how near to anyone may be the final relief
from all its evils. Weariness of mere existence is a
heavy, and probably a very common, secret burden ;
one which makes the thought of annihilation more
attractive to some of us than any celestial visions.
Those who suffer from it would not welcome the
brightest prospects of heaven, unless they could hope
first for a "long and dreamless sleep" in which to
wash off the travel-stains of the past.
160 Thoughts on the Central Radiame
This is a feeling which is probably most common
in youth or old age, when the ties to life are fewer
than they are in its prime, and when the past or the
future may well look almost intolerably long to the
wearied imagination. It may be that in the miserable
experience of some sufferers this deep weariness of
life may not exclude the fear of death ; but so terrible
a combination can scarcely be either common or
lasting. Probably the normal state of things is that
in which some degree of fear, or at least of reluctance,
exists as a pure instinct ; rising and falling with
physical causes, ready to give force to the terrors of
conscience and the cravings of affection, but held in
check by various considerations and controlled by
the will, if not utterly subdued by trustful hope. In
people of active energetic temperament, with keen
susceptibility to sensuous impressions, one may some-
times observe that no amount either of religious
hope for another life, or of painful experience of this,
will overcome the constitutional shrinking from the
anticipated rending asunder of body and soul. They
carry the same feeling through sympathy into their
thoughts of the death of others, which appears to be
almost physically shocking to them, however obviously
acceptable to the person chiefly concerned Such a
state of feeling is to those who do not share it as
unaccountable as it is evident. Looking at death
calmly, as one of the very few circumstances of quite
The Fear of Death 161
universal experience, any vehement disinclination to
it would seem to be inappropriate as well as futile.
But disinclination to some of its accidental circum-
stances is but too easily intelligible. This is probably
another reason why the shrinking from it often seems
to increase as youth is left behind. The very young
cannot know how terrible a thing sickness is ; those
who have watched many deathbeds can scarcely
forget the awful possibilities of physical suffering.
And yet it seems probable that many of the worst
appearances are more or less delusive. A very
moderate experience of sick rooms suffices to show
that actual suffering bears no exact proportion to its
outward manifestations. Be this as it may, physical
suffering is clearly no necessary accompaniment of
death, and the dread of pain which makes us shrink
from the prospect of mortal illness is quite a different
thing from the real instinctive dread of death : it
should indeed, and often does, act powerfully in
reconciling us to the prospect of death.
In like manner the unwillingness to be taken
away from life in its fulness, to be cut off from the
enjoyment of bright prospects, and debarred from
the satisfaction of that ever-deepening curiosity with
which every active mind must behold the mysterious
drama going on around us — this unwillingness is
quite a distinct feeling from the shrinking of the
flesh and spirit from dissolution. It is a feeling
s. 11
162 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
which should in reason belong in its full force only
to those who look upon death as the end of all things,
and for whom, therefore, it should at least have no
terrors. Is it some mysteriously intense appetite, or
an inveterate confusion of thought, which hinders
most people from perceiving that not to exist cannot
possibly be in the slightest degree painful or even
unpleasant ? If, on the other hand, we regard death
merely as a transition from one state of existence to
another (and of an existence possibly of infinite
duration), we open the door to all extremes of
glorious or fearful expectation, and the event itself
shrinks into insignificance. From this point of view,
as well as from the last, though for such different
reasons, the important question is not when we die,
but how we live. Religion and philosophy on different
grounds combine to impress upon us the continuity
and mutual dependence of successive "dispensations"
or "developments." We cannot conceive of, much
less really believe in, any state of existence in which
we can have any interest wholly disconnected from
our interest in this life. The laws which regulate the
world we know must be in some degree the laws of
any world in which we can conceive of ourselves as
existing and retaining our identity, and it is hard to
understand how any rational being can find a fancied
safety in the mere delay of an inevitable crisis. Of
course the theological origin of such a fancy is
The Fear of Death 163
familiar enough ; but the result is, I think, as
unworthy of its own religious basis as it is of our
human dignity. To suppose that we can have any
reasonable ground of confidence for this life either in
or apart from an Almighty Being whom we cannot
trust with our destiny in the next, is certainly not
more foolish than it is faithless. Our hopes for this
world and for the next must rest upon one foundation,
— our faith must be equally prepared for trials in
respect of both. Either death leads to nothing at
all, and to fear it is unmeaning ; or it is a mere
parenthesis, and to fear it is unworthy of those who
believe in a righteous order.
Still, while Life is sweet, we must needs shrink
more or less from what at least looks like its untimely
termination. If it were not for the conventional
association of sorrow with death already referred to,
few, perhaps, would be selfish enough to wish to
detain the aged from their rest, and to themselves
the prospect is rarely unwelcome ; but for the young
in their springtime, or the middle-aged in their
vigour, death necessarily involves a loss which is not
the less real and need not be the less keenly felt
because it may be regarded as overbalanced by the
gain. Let our anticipations of life beyond the grave
be as bright as they will, there can be no use in
denying the preciousness of those which lie on this
side of it ; and the most ardently hopeful must still
n— 2
164 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
feel that, if the choice lay with themselves, it would
be wisest not to hurry over the preliminary phase.
But the truth is brought home to us again and again,
that we have not light enough to choose by. In the
dimness we can faintly discern that life has other
kinds of completeness besides length of days : —
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be ;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May —
Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
As the years go on, there gathers a special radiance
of eternal youth around some of the figures from
whom all our hopes in this world have been most
sharply severed. There are lives so rounded and
crowned by their completed deeds of love, that
Death seems to have appeared in the fulness of their
prime only to consecrate them for ever; others stand
apart from human ties in a solitude which makes
time seem of little consequence, and the grave a not
unfamiliar country. In all these cases we may even
now see a fitness in what, according to mere reckon-
ing of time, would be called unseasonable. And if
we can catch glimpses of these things from without,
The Fear of Death 165
there are no doubt many inward dramas which refuse
to square themselves with the external framework of
human life. We do not know to what unfathomable
necessities the times and seasons of life and death
may correspond ; and as little do we know, in looking
at each other's lives, what may be unfolding or what
may be concluded, as seen from within. That which
seems to others a cutting short of activity, may be to
ourselves the laying down of arms no longer needed ;
our eyes may see the haven, where our friends can
see only the storm ; or if we cannot see a fitness in
the time of our death, is that a strange thing in such
a life as this ?
SIGNS AND WONDERS IN DIVINE
GUIDANCE1.
In our day a considerable change has taken place
in the attitude of thoughtful people towards what
used to be called "the supernatural." The Psychical
Research Society, whose very existence is the result
of a change in our point of view, has no doubt brought
about a still further modification of it, of which I at
least am quite unable to take any precise measure,
and which seems to be telling in two opposite direc-
tions.
It has undoubtedly diminished the difficulty of
believing that there may be a real kernel of fact in
many stories which forty years ago would have been
contemptuously disposed of as a mere " parcel of lies."
This increase of readiness to consider and inquire into
mysterious incidents is of course part of a much larger
change in the tendencies of modern thought
1 The substance of an address given to the Sunday Society
at Newnhain College.
Signs and Wonders 167
On the other hand the attempt, in so far as it has
been successful, to classify and account for such
phenomena, has in some slight degree encroached
upon the area of mystery, and has thus seemed to
lessen the number of opportunities for wonder.
Some phenomena have by this process been reduced
in rank, and messages purporting to come from an
unknown world of spirits have been lowered to the
level of interesting cases of thought-reading, or mere
pranks of the " subliminal mind."
But to encroach upon a region is not the same
thing as to narrow it, unless the further boundary be
fixed ; and the further boundary of the supernatural,
or, as I would rather say, of the superhuman, has, I
suppose, never even come within sight. Its mysteries
are not so much impenetrable as unfathomable. We
need have no fear that the sources of wonder will
ever really be dried up. We have, I believe, gained
rather than lost, even in romance, by the attempt
to study scientifically what for so long some of us
have enjoyed in spite of science.
There has also been, within my own recollection,
a marked change of feeling — perhaps I ought rather
to say a marked diffusion of changed feeling — with
regard to miracles, which from being regarded as
evidence in favour of the creeds with which they were
associated have come to be felt chiefly as obstacles
to the adoption of those creeds. Of course this is the
168 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
natural result of the popular notion that miracles
meant the occurrence of impossibilities — a notion
involving a contradiction in terms. But even if the
word be understood in its proper sense of a wonder
merely, it is obvious that the more wonderful an
occurrence is, the more it stands in need of being
itself proved before it can be used as a proof of
anything else.
Whether our faith in spiritual power will in time
grow strong enough, and be sufficiently corrected and
tested by increasing knowledge, to warrant our ac-
cepting such wonders as belong to our present creeds,
or whether our critical faculties will succeed in dis-
entangling the true faith from obstructive legends,
remains to be seen. It does not on the face of it
seem unlikely that, in any great crisis in the life
either of individuals or of the race, wonderful lights
should be thrown on, or reflected from, the depths of
inner experience. But the subject of miracles is
quite beyond my scope. I aim only at suggesting
some thoughts as to our right attitude with regard
to such signs and wonders as may occur spontaneously
(unsought, that is, by ourselves) in our own experience,
considered as bearing on practice, and especially on
our religious life.
And here we must distinguish between signs and
wonders. Not all wonders are signs (though it may
be hard to find anything wonderful which is quite
Signs and Wonders 169
without significance), and certainly not all signs are
wonders. By a "sign" for my present purpose I
mean something which affords direction. A flag or
a whistle may do this without exciting any wonder.
And our wonder may by strongly excited by some-
thing unfamiliar and striking — say, for instance, a
mirage or an apparition — which has no practical
bearing on our conduct.
I suppose that all study of nature (including
human nature) tends to increase our sense of being
immersed in mystery in all directions — of the ex-
istence of mysteries unfathomable, or at any rate
unfathomed by us, not only around but within us.
To this indeed we are so much accustomed that on
many of us it makes but little impression. Yet there
are moments when the surrounding mystery seems
to draw near and to become palpable — to lay as it
were a finger on us individually. A dream, a
waking vision, words spoken, as it were, in our mind's
ear, even a mental sensation, and perhaps still more
a significant coincidence, may startle us with the
sense of receiving a communication from the unseen
— a personal intimation.
I said just now that not all signs were wonders.
Perhaps the most impressive and suggestive of all the
intimations we are considering are those signs of
which the wonder consists, not in anything abnormal
in the method of their communication, but in the
170 Thoughts on the Central Radicmee
appropriateness of the communication itself to the
circumstances of the moment — in the combination of
events, ordinary in themselves, but significant in the
fact of their combination — coincidences, in short,
unplanned and uncontrollable by us. It is not easy
to relate these experiences, because their significance
often depends on long, and perhaps minute, chains of
circumstances and feelings which can be known only
to ourselves.
Under this head (and protected by the same
natural veil of privacy) come most of those significant
occurrences of which we speak as answers to prayer
— coincidences or correspondences between our re-
quests and our allotments.
Any attempt to trace the full significance of such
coincidences would lead us beyond our present scope,
but there is one remark which it seems worth while
to make about them — they have, so to speak, the
merit of being not of our own making ; they cannot
be suspected of arising from disordered nerves or
from mere imagination. There is in them nothing
akin to the unlawful dealing with possibly unhallowed
or noxious powers of which so many of us feel an
instinctive (and I cannot but believe a salutary)
dread in regard to consciously invited "spiritual
manifestations." For the purpose of serious study
some things may be justifiable which no one should
do out of mere curiosity. I cannot attempt to draw
Signs and Wonders 171
for others the line between lawful and unlawful
dealings with "spirits" — but I am very sure that
there is great danger in disregarding it.
Spontaneous personal intimations include not
only coincidences, but the less historical and verifiable
cases of presentiments and premonitions, of know-
ledge "without outward information," of mysterious
promptings to perform certain acts or visit certain
places, of apparitions and visions and dreams and
voices. Granting, for the moment, as I believe no
one can wholly deny, the veracity of those who relate
such experiences, the questions cannot but arise :
How are we to estimate their value as intimations ?
What is for us the practical and religious value of a
wonderful sign or a significant wonder? How far
does the fact that an experience is unaccountable
and mysterious in its origin bestow on it, or deprive
it of, any rightful authority over us ?
Those to whom these experiences come will not
be likely to undervalue them ; but even they must
feel that the question how far we are justified in
obeying them is one of some difficulty and importance.
It is not, I believe (as it might appear), needless
to insist that it can only be by the exercise of a real
ethical judgment that we can be preserved from
delusions in these dangerous regions ; that we must
never, in obedience to the promptings of unseen and
unknown powers, transgress the very slightest of the
172 Thoughts on the Central Badicmce
restraints imposed by conscience, by good faith or
fitness, or even by common sense. It is only when,
on all these well-recognised grounds, we are sure
that the step mysteriously indicated is fully open to
us, that any question of obedience to the suggestion
can arise.
But even so, there are many who would hesitate
to take any action at all in obedience to an imper-
fectly explicable summons, especially if the action
involved trouble or inconvenience.
The most obvious ground of hesitation is the
general belief that openness to mysterious com-
munications implies some degree of nervous weakness.
Professor James indeed urges, and I think with
reason, that the results of these impressions, which
have in point of fact been experienced by most of
the great religious leaders, are in no way discredited
by the fact — if it be a fact — that the capacity for
receiving them belongs chiefly to what he calls the
neurotic temperament. He maintains that the only
really important question is as to the intrinsic quality
of the communication, as making for or against
edification and enlightenment ; that, in short, truth
is none the worse for having been discerned by the
spirit through some gap or chink which may betray
a lack of normal thickness of the veil of the flesh —
perhaps even at the cost of some damage to that
useful protecting screen.
Signs <md Wonders 173
It is satisfactory to be assured that truth is none
the worse for being mysteriously communicated
But still we must ask, Is a message any the better
for the mystery of its origin ? Does the mystery in
fact tend in any degree to stamp it as divine?
The Society of Friends, to which (not by birth
but by conviction) I belong, has in its annals and
biographies a rich store of records of "remarkable
occurrences" (as Friends used to call them) of this
kind. Such incidents are very familiar not only in
the past but in the present everyday life of Friends,
by whom they are often regarded with a certain
reverence, as bearing a sort of divine stamp — as in
some degree evidence of a "right guidance" from
above. Such a feeling is no more peculiar to Friends
than are the "remarkable occurrences" themselves,
but it is perhaps amongst Friends that it is most
fully recognised and accepted — a very natural result
of the special stress laid by them on the belief in
immediate divine guidance ; in what William Law calls
"perennial inspiration" — in the possibility and the
blessedness of "walking with God" as did Abraham.
But the very preciousness of the thought of
divine guidance makes it the more imperative a
duty to test in every possible way — at least to expose
freely to every kind of test — whatever claims our
attention as coming from that supreme source of
blessing.
174 Thoughts on the Central Radicmce
My own reply to the questions I have asked would
be that the mere fact of mystery or unaccountableness
in the transmission of a message can neither give nor
take away authority. I believe entirely with Professor
James that this must depend on the intrinsic nature
of the communication, and on the appeal made by
it to the enlightened conscience. A communication
which, being unaccountable, must of necessity be
anonymous, should certainly be subjected to every
test by which any other anonymous communication
would be tried before being allowed to influence our
action. As far as we can have any knowledge of the
unseen world of spiritual existence, so far, I believe,
do we find the old distinctions between good and
evil, weighty and trivial, clean and unclean, holy and
unholy, helpful and harmful, and so on, running
through everything. In the invisible as well as in
common daylight we need the exercise of spiritual
discernment ; and the deeper and more central the
power, the more essential is a "single eye" in meet-
ing or in wielding it.
That single eye can, I believe, be preserved only
through obedience to the innermost and central light
which shines through conscience, — through a resolute
" seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteous-
ness." But ample experience proves that in that
search we are often aided and prompted by impulses
springing from depths we cannot fathom — nay, I
Signs and Wonders 175
believe that it is in obedience to such impulses that
the greatest heights of spiritual life and blessing
have been attained. Who can fathom the sources of
inspiration, and who will dare to say that we could
afford to forego them?
Each instance of a personal intimation must of
course be judged on its merits. But equally of course
our judgment on all such matters will be in ac-
cordance with our underlying convictions respecting
the nature of our relation to our Maker and the
right method of approaching Him. It is the special
trouble of our times that on these fundamental
questions there is so much of doubt and divergence
amongst us. I cannot here attempt to do more than
avow my own point of view, without attempting any
vindication of its reasonableness.
My own belief, then, is that it is right and reason-
able for us to expect that we should be able to hold
some immediate communication with the Father of
our Spirits ; that He in whom we live and move and
have our being does in fact exercise in various ways
some degree of guidance towards all His creatures ;
a guidance which, as we have faith and patience and
courage to yield ourselves to it, becomes more and
more perceptible and clear and satisfying, until at last
life may be altogether transfigured by it. The more
elementary and universal form taken by this guiding
Power lies, no doubt, in the broad highway of morality
176 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
— of recognised principles of Tirtue and social
obligation. To many people these outward and
universally applicable rules seem to be the only
accessible guides of conduct, and it may be that for
such they are, in truth, sufficient. But when we can
in sincerity say that "All these we have kept from
our youth upwards," a more intimate "counsel of
perfection" may be addressed to us individually:
" Sell all and follow Me" ; and by those who, to the
best of their ability, are truly following in the narrow
upward path that leads towards life eternal, it has
again and again been experienced that there come
from time to time touches of the very "finger of God"
— whispers of the inspeaking "still small voice" —
gleams of the innermost radiance — which do guide the
willing soul ever upwards and onwards, not indeed
towards any selfish or self-chosen ends, but towards
the one supreme object of spiritual desire, the very
Fountain of Life itself.
It is in this region that I believe that we may
rightly look for actual personal intimations of the
divine pleasure ; but even in this region, and perhaps
in it especially, the need of watchfulness is unceasing.
Here the imagination may easily play us false. In
" high places " there are still snares (and ever fresh
snares) for self-love and self-importance ; and that
divine education which teaches us at all times largely
through our mistakes and failures, may well become
Signs cmd Wonders 177
more severe in its discipline as the pupil advances
from the elementary to the higher stages of instruc-
tion.
In all the best mystical teaching there are
warnings against the snares of the imagination, and
the greater safety of the hard and humble pathway
of mere faith is insisted upon. No doubt experience
teaches this emphatically to all who have long tried,
in the scriptural sense, to " walk with God."
I have referred to the accumulated experience
of the Society of Friends with regard to personal
intimations of divine " requirements." Two practices
have come to be recognised by Friends as of great
value as safeguards against delusion in this innermost
region of experience. The first is "waiting"; the
second, seeking "Friends' unity."
Not to act hastily upon any impression of a
mysterious kind — to "dwell under it" or "pause upon
it" long enough to test in some degree its abiding
power, is the most obvious dictate of ordinary
prudence. The wisdom of sharing such impressions
with others before acting upon them is, I believe,
equally clear, though it is not of course applicable
in all cases. But where practicable it is a most im-
portant preservative of sanity. As Sir William Gull
once said in this connection, "The human mind
needs ventilation" ; and I believe that communication
with other minds known to be imbued with right
S. 12
178 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
principles is the best corrective of spiritual self-
importance, as well as of other morbid tendencies
besetting the religious life in its intenser developments.
People often seem to think that the claim to be
under Divine Guidance is a claim to infallibility —
forgetting that the higher the teaching the more
patience and submission is needed-for its right inter-
pretation, and the more painful will often be the
processes through which its lessons are to be learnt.
I specially value the emphatic denial of this claim to
infallibility which is involved in the Quaker tradition
(and out of which indeed our whole system of
"discipline" has been built) — the recognition of the
need for the most careful testing and correction of
individual impulses by the collective judgment of the
meeting. Friends have learnt to recognise not only
that the initiative in any divinely guided service must
belong to the individual, but also that the wisdom,
and in some cases even the duty, of the individual is
to submit his own interpretation of such a call to
the united judgment of his fellow-disciples. In this
view there is, I think, an important suggestion as to
the path of safety for the inwardly impressionable.
Mysterious personal intimations may be said to
belong to that twilight region where the brightness
of day begins to give place to the vaster and more
remote light of the stars ; even as the whirlwind and
the fire were quenched before the " still small voice."
Signs cmd Wonders 179
The very possibility of communion with God must
ever be a profound mystery ; therefore we recognise
in mystery the fitting atmosphere for communications
from above, being, as it is, intimately associated with
our deepest sense of authority. But mystery, like
music, in itself neither proves nor authorises, but
appeals — and for the moment at least exalts — as with
the pledge of a beauty not belonging to earth. Such
is the power of the indescribable and unforgettable
beauty seen sometimes on the faces of the newly
dead — and seen nowhere else — one of the tenderest
of all signs. Such, again, are visions of the departed,
or of angels. Of these glimpses of glory we do not
ask what is the practical bearing. Rather we desire
to ponder them in our hearts with thankful wonder
at the tender mercy and loving-kindness which
vouchsafes them.
The thing we are trained to look for is indeed the
thing we become capable of seeing. As the painter
sees colour and form, and the musician hears harmony,
so the heart trained to devout contemplation will see
rays of heavenly light and will hear the accents of
love where to others all may seem barren and silent.
"Where one heard thunder and one saw flame,
I only knew He named my name.''
12—2
LETTER TO YOUNG FRIENDS
OF PHILADELPHIA YEARLY MEETING.
Dear young Friends,
Tidings reach me of you now and then
which give me a deep interest in the effort you are
making to uphold and to spread a knowledge of that
pure Truth and Life by which our Society has been
made a blessing to generation after generation, not
only of its own members but of the surrounding
world. As you may know, I am one of those to
whom the practice of that united worship " after the
manner of Friends," which aims above all things to
be a worship in spirit and in truth, came (at a
moment of need) as a deliverance and a possession
of quite unspeakable value. From the time of the
first meeting I ever attended — more than thirty years
ago — my earnest desire has been to contribute what
I could towards the maintenance of the one form of
united worship which seems to me to be absolutely
Letter to Yov/ng Friends 181
pure, allowable, fitting and effectual, as offered by
the humble and contrite in spirit to the High and
Holy One that inhabiteth Eternity.
I do not wish or need to write to you of the
grounds on which I have felt that this claim could
be made on behalf of our manner of worship. It
is enough at this moment to say that I am deeply
convinced that for many — probably in these days for
an increasing multitude — it is the only manner of
worship quite free from practices incompatible with
entire sincerity. What more it may become to those
who in humble trust and diligence steadily practise
it, I will not try to say. I hope that you know, or
will know, more by actual experience than any words
of mine could describe.
But now there is a matter on which I must try
to send you some of my thoughts. The very central
truth of Christianity, which is of course the central
truth of Quakerism, is that which Wm. Penn so
wonderfully sets forth in No Cross No Crown.
What I want to do is not to preach this doctrine to
you, for that I trust would be superfluous, but to
point out to you the special need there is in our day
for a practical testimony to its truth.
The passion of pity has of late years — (and by
" late years " I mean a longer time than any of you
have lived) — this passion, beautiful and precious in
itself, has of late years risen to a height which
182 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
appears to me to be full of danger — and over against
which there is great need that we should set a deeper
and more courageous faith. On every hand we meet
with systems based on the abhorrence of suffering ;
systems resting on the theory that God — being Love
— cannot have willed that we should suffer ; and the
desire to get rid of suffering seems to be carrying
multitudes off their feet ; not only carrying them
into present extravagances, but, I greatly fear, in
many cases carrying them, unawares perhaps but
surely, towards the logical conclusion that since (on
their view) suffering cannot be inflicted by the hand
of Love, then God, the author of this world so full of
inevitable suffering, cannot be Love.
The great need of the present time seems to me
to be that we should see the glory of the Cross — that
we should realise the power of suffering to cleanse,
to strengthen, to raise. Friends have always recog-
nized, more clearly I think than other Protestants,
the baptizing power of suffering. It is only by taking
up the Cross that we can see its glory.
To some of you it may be that no suffering has
yet come which you would think worthy to be- called
a Cross. But, dear Friends, even children must know
in some degree what it is to be disappointed, thwarted,
crossed Every pain, even the slightest vexation, has
in it something of the nature of the Cross of Christ,
in that it makes us feel that the Father's will may
■ Letter to Young Friends 183
run counter to our own will ; and that it gives us the
opportunity of tasting in our own experience that
deepest and purest of joys — the joy of preferring
His Will when it crosses our own.
And there is no fear that as time goes on, any
one of you will lack abundant opportunity for this
most blessed experience. God has so ordered things
in this world of our pilgrimage that tribulation must
sooner or later befall every one of us. Let us meet
it from the first in the spirit of good soldiers of our
Lord Jesus Christ — not flinching from any pain or
opposition that we may meet in treading the narrow
upward path that leadeth unto life — life more abun-
dant for ourselves, life radiating blessing for others.
The spirit of the Crucified One is the spirit of
victory. True it is a victory which must be won in
the first place over the adversary in our own hearts,
and which begins, like all fruitful seeds of life, with
that which is least. We cannot rise at will or in a
moment to "the measure of the stature of the fulness
of Christ." But Jesus himself "grew and waxed
strong in spirit" — and from the first we can set
ourselves steadily to follow Him. We can, like our
Master, "learn obedience" by the things (be they
great or small) which we have to suffer ; by denying
our very self where it is contrary to the Will of
God, and being ready to give up what we hold
dearest if it would beguile us from our loyalty.
184 Thoughts on the, Central RaMame
I do not mean by this only such great sacrifices as
are at times called for from some ; I mean the daily
discipline through which from the beginning each
one of us is taught, if we are willing to learn, to
choose obedience rather than self-indulgence whether
in small things or great — whether in the outward
act or in the inner disposition of the heart. This
discipline is, I believe (for I have found it so in my
own experience, and I know it has been felt so by
others) tenderly adapted by the Father's care and
loving-kindness to the ability and the special needs
of the willing learner. Even a child can understand
that to love God with all his heart and mind and soul
and strength is the first and great commandment,
and that to live as is right and pleasing in his sight
is our supreme duty and our supreme joy ; for which
we may well be content to forego whatever would
hinder it, however strong the attraction. Such
faithfulness will not "cost us nothing." Can we not
rejoice that it is so ? That even we may have some-
thing costly to offer ? May not every one of us, even
the weakest, keep before our minds the angel's song
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will towards men " as the very end and aim of
our existence ?
The path of blessing is the rugged and uphill path
of victory. It is by taking up our cross and following
the Lamb wherever He may lead us that we may,
Letter to Yowng Friends 185
and do, overcome the world. To flinch from suffering,
to allow ourselves even in thought to prefer ease to
obedience, is to court defeat. All good, all beauty,
all real victory depends on putting first that which
really is first — on seeking first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness.
The desire to avoid suffering for ourselves, and to
extinguish it for others, is so natural, it seems at
times so overpowering, and yet, if yielded to, it is so
certain to carry us away from the narrow path which
leads to eternal life, that I look with great jealousy
and dread upon any system which is based upon it or
appeals to it. To call pain evil — to fail to distinguish
between suffering and wrong — to prefer freedom
from sickness or sorrow to the heavenly discipline
which leads at whatever cost to " glory, honour, and
immortality" is assuredly to sell our birthright for
a mess of pottage. The Christian life must always
be a life of warfare. Some of us indeed have learnt,
from the Prince of Peace himself, that our warfare
must not be against our brethren, but against those
powers of darkness which are the common enemies
of us all. But let us see to it that in striving for
peace, we rise above, not sink below, the soldier's
ideal of energetic, self-sacrificing loyalty.
I make no attempt to solve in theory the ancient
problem as to the meaning of good. But I know
that no idea of goodness can be a worthy one which
does not require of us courage and patience. The
12—5
186 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
power to rejoice in tribulation, to glory in the Cross
of Christ, lies at the very heart of any goodness I
can recognise. We as Christians have no need of
fine speculative distinctions. All we need is that it
should be our delight to do and to suffer the will of
God — that his law should be truly within our hearts.
Seek first — it is all a question of what should come
first. Resolutely and steadfastly to seek first the
kingdom of God is to have that singleness of eye
through which our whole body shall be full of light.
It is to attain the true simplicity — the simplicity not
of exclusion, but of a right subordination ; and this
simplicity it is which transfigures life. This simple,
dutiful, steadfast, and victorious life, at once blessed
and blessing, is the life to which as Christians we are
called, and which as "Friends of the Truth" we
believe it to be in a peculiar manner our place to
exemplify. We hear a good deal about "giving the
message of Quakerism " ; but I think our first
business is to live the life of Quakerism — the " solid,
innocent life," through which more than by any
words, Friends have been wont to defend their
strongholds, proving by actual experiment the all-
sufficiency of the Life of Christ in the heart.
With love, your friend,
Caroline E. Stephen.
April, 1907.
CONCLUSION.
While dwelling on the possibilities of a Divine
irradiation of our lives, we cannot forget how com-
pletely the great standing problem of the existence
of evil carries us out of our depth, so that theory
has never been able to find any entire solution of it :
In practice indeed it is solved, or dissolved — I mean
rendered harmless — by faith ; that is, by the insight
which pierces through appearances and dares to test
the purifying power of pain by submission of the
will. Those who have opened their hearts to the
Divine discipline know that Love is at least as
unfathomable as pain. They know that there is at
the heart of all suifering a joy not to be known at
less cost ; that the brightest gleams of " the glory
which shall be revealed" have come to us only
through clouds and darkness. In looking on at pain
from outside, we cannot see this glory. It is only as
we enter into the depths that it shines forth.
For those who have actually tasted in their own
experience the joy which is at the heart of sorrow,
188 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
and the invigoration produced by victory over evil,
it may yet be impossible to offer even in thought
anything purporting to be a real solution of the
problem of evil; but it is still more impossible to
them to doubt that there is such a solution. They
live in the presence of a glory which is felt rather
than seen. They do not speak very freely of that
which they know to be unspeakable ; but in propor-
tion to their faith their whole manner of being
becomes a witness to the emancipating power of
trust in God.
From this standpoint, we do not lose sight of the
dark background ; but we have ceased to fear it.
But others will say, the question is not as to the
possibility of a satisfying if only practical solution of
this awful problem, but as to the existence of any
evidence for such a solution, or for the belief which
it assumes. Can we know what is the truth as to
the reality of a Divine Order ?
The answer must surely be that we cannot know
in the sense of being able to demonstrate it by
purely intellectual methods, though we may know in
the sense of having an unfaltering because well-
grounded inward assurance of it; but at least we
do know in what direction to look for Truth We
can look upwards. We can watch — as those that
watch for the morning — for Truth, Goodness, Beauty.
Faith certainly contains a large element of Will.
Conclusion, 189
I do not mean by this the wilfulness which cherishes
beliefs because of their pleasantness, or comforting
effect, and refuses to weigh the evidence for un-
welcome truth. I mean the steadfast will which
refuses to be daunted by any pain in its search for
truth ; which cleaves to the right in spite of all that
would draw or drive it towards easier conclusions.
I mean the resolve never to give up watching for
the Highest Good ; never to yield to anything that
clouds our spiritual vision ; not to be daunted by
anything that the flesh or the devil can do to hinder
us from this watch.
We cannot wholly fail in this search as long as
our hearts are really set upon it. It may well be
that our theories are largely wrong ; our names for
the eternal things may need much correction ; but
the Eternal Realities themselves no more depend on
the names we give them than do the stars. And we
depend wholly on that which is eternal ; be the
meaning of that word what it may. As we pass
through the darkest times we come to know, as we
steadily look upwards, "that the heavens do rule."
Is this rule a grinding tyranny, or is it an Everlasting
Order to which every spirit, if it did but know the
whole, would gladly consent ?
That it is so — that we do indeed live under an
Everlasting Order of which the very heart and foun-
tain is Love — is our faith. And the immediate effect
190 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
of faith is to open the door of the heart to every
possible dispensation, whether joyous or grievous, of
the Fatherly discipline in which we trust.
The modern thought of the Divine Being while
it has gained much in vastness and in solemnity,
has lost something in Fatherly tenderness. It has
become less personal than of old; and this is felt
by many who have not ceased to seek after Him as
adding greatly to the difficulty of prayer. I believe
it to be for many of us an inevitable though temporary
phase in spiritual education. Single aspects of great
and complicated subjects necessarily assume for a
time, in minds on which they are just dawning, a
proportional importance which does not belong to
them in the final synthesis. And it is no wonder if
our expanding acquaintance with the whole wonderful
system of natural law, and with the vast and troublous
history of our race and its beliefs, should have de-
prived many of us for a time of the power to repose
in the simplicity of that " revelation to babes " which
is after all the deepest and the most lasting of faiths.
This revelation lies in the life and power of the Man
of Sorrows who died on the Cross ; who came " to
reveal the Father."
While human fathers are what some of us have
known them to be, we shall not easily give up the
trust that in the Supreme Source of Good there is
the antetype of that most profound type of protecting
Conclusion 191
and guiding Love. It cannot be that He who made
fathers and mothers is Himself but an impersonal
Power. The faith which seeks His face only the
more earnestly for the darkness, and is ready to feel
for His hand in every storm comes, I must believe,
nearer to the truth than is possible to mere thought.
There cam, at any rate be no insincerity in cleaving
to the Highest, even while uncertain whether that
title truly belongs to a Power or a Person. We
cannot be wrong in maintaining through all that
is temporarily chilling in thought, our resolute and
humble search for, and fidelity to, whatever is truly
Highest and Best. And the darkest hour may be
that in which we most unreservedly surrender
ourselves to the invisible, unapproachable, Source of
Light. Some of us can say that in doing so our eyes
have been opened to behold the Father's face. No
one who has had this experience will ask whether it
is enough. "Whom have I in heaven but thee, and
there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison
of thee " ; this is the natural and only language of
the soul to which such vision is vouchsafed.
And so, in a sense, I must believe that it will be
with the race. The increase of knowledge and the
accumulation of experience cannot but increase the
difficulty of co-ordinating our thought by as much as
they are destined to enrich its content. In struggling
with intellectual difficulties, attention is diverted
192 Thoughts on the Central Radiance
from the growth of moral and spiritual life, to which
nevertheless these very difficulties may be con-
tributing. But if the process by which faith is
evolved be indeed under the care of the Divine
Author of all Good, we need not be daunted by
any passing struggle. Faith and reason equally
demand from us humility and patience, and equally
assure us of the worthiness of the end in view.
Therefore I look forward to the emergence of a
fuller and riper faith, in which the wise and prudent
shall be at one with the babe. In that faith we may
trust that a wider thought will be combined with a
firmer courage, and a deeper awe.
Meanwhile we are, I trust, on the right track in
our present earnest attempt to learn what Jesus
Christ actually was, said and did here on earth,
rather than what has been said and thought about
Him by those who have claimed authority to teach
in His Name. Such studies may or may not tend to
confirm many of the doctrines taught in the Creeds ;
but through them I believe that many may be brought
to enter more fully into the meaning of the words
"the love of Christ constraineth us." For as the
sunbeams are one with the Sun, so is the Word of
God one with God ; and when He " became flesh and
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, full of grace
and truth," He did indeed " draw all men " to Him
Conclusion, 193
There are truths, and I believe the Divine nature
of the Man Christ Jesus to be one of them, which
can be understood only by immediate revelation.
Be this as it may, it remains true that none can know
the Father except through the Son, or the Son unless
the Father draw him. We are, I trust, on the way to
see more of " the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ " — as the Light of
God Himself shines more and more into our hearts,
and reaches us also in the varied loveliness of reflec-
tion from all the human life hidden with Christ in
Him.
(EambriBge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVEBSITY PEE8S.
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